IT'S 3 A.M. AND I'VE JUST GOTTEN BACK FROM SAM AND ADAN'S PLACE IN QUEENS. I'm tired, I want to go to bed right now, but first, I need to punctuate a comment I made regarding New York City's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg.

If I recall correctly, ET asserted that Bloomberg was giving the outer boroughs the shaft, what with his proposed tolls on the bridges. ET further commented that the mayor was in the habit of cutting recycling days in the outer boroughs, while leaving the recycling schedule of Manhattan unchanged.

My reply was that Manhattanites pay more rent and more tax money than those who live in Queens, Brooklyn, or the Bronx (at least for now.), and therefore, it was fair that they get more public services. In hindsight, perhaps I should have worded my thoughts a little differently. What I meant was, since Manhattanites provide more in income taxes to the city in any given year, they are entitled to be LAST as far as having their public services reduced or even renounced.

I believe this is perfectly logical. The outer boroughs probably need Manhattan a lot more than Manhattan needs them. It is the borough that brings in the tourists from all parts of the world. Businessmen congregate here; Wall Street and Broadway and Times Square and Chinatown are all located in Manhattan. It is in the interest of New York City, not to mention New York State, as a whole, to see that the streets of Manhattan are routinely free of garbage and recyclables.

I doubt that the majority of tourists nowadays bought a ticket to New York City because they saw "Midnight Cowboy" and thought, "I've gotta go THERE." They want the photogenic, and hygienic, NYC Giuliani's been promoting since the 90's. So in closing, no, the fact that Manhattan is comprised almost exclusively of millionaires does not entitle them to more of the basic social services. But a strong Manhattan benefits the outer boroughs, too, and if Bloomberg doesn't want garbage piling up on the streets of the Jewel of the Northeast, he is only protecting the state's most valuable commodity.

MELANCHOLY AND THE INFINITE SAD MESS, or, THUNDERBOLTS ARE GO!

Yeah, I fucked up. I freely admit it, so now, maybe I can start to make things better.

I really had my heart set on an M.A. in Journalism, either from NYU or Columbia. Having done research on the practical implications of the degree, I knew that an M.A. in Journalism did not promise more money than a B.A. holder, or even immediate employment. But I wanted the rigorous curriculum, and even more importantly, the potential contacts. So I applied to those two schools, and those two schools alone. I will grant you, not a lot of colleges even offer an M.A. in Journalism. However, I could have applied for Hunter College’s M.A. in Media Studies (though God only knows what I would have used for a portfolio), or the same program at New School University. But I didn’t. I wanted the NAME college, and the prestige that accompanies either a Columbia or an NYU. I made a valiant play for both, and came up empty.

(For those who didn’t know, I made similarly valiant efforts for the Film programs at NYU and Florida State, and came up equally empty there, too. But that is another rant…)

So the 2003-2004 schoolyear is drawing to a close without me, and there’s a good chance the 2004-2005 schoolyear will also feature me standing on the sidelines. I suppose I shouldn’t make it out to be the Greek tragedy that it isn’t; I’m not in college anymore because I graduated in 2002, and there is no law that says I must go to grad school. Yet, with my spotty employment record to date, and the fact that I’m about to toss elbows with a second graduating class, I can’t help feeling that the longer I stay out of grad school, the less chance I have of ever, ever landing a position anywhere.

Of course, that is my fault, too. Like my parents tell me, I didn’t have to major and (almost) minor exclusively in the Liberal Arts. I didn’t have to leave FIU for NYU. My usual reply, which is becoming all-too-familiar lately, is that I didn’t ask to be born, either. Then my mom reminds me that I was a blue baby, meaning I found the womb too confining and decided to make my first appearance a few weeks early. Considering that I am the most indecisive person anyone’s ever met (Or perhaps I’m not—I can’t decide), I find my prenatal impulsiveness difficult to fathom. And frankly, what was I thinking? Had I known what I was about to get into, I would have stayed in my mom’s womb until I was eighteen.

Speaking of my parents, I’m on the phone with my mom the other day, and she tells me that she and my dad are selling the house in Miami. Thunderbolt #4 within the last three weeks! I guess I shouldn’t really care, since I’ve spent maybe two weeks out of the last three years in that house. Like my mom says, my brother’s in Chicago, and neither of us visit very often. It’s just too much house. And maybe it is.

But they’re not planning to buy a smaller house in Miami. No, they’re going to move to Port St. Lucie, a trailer park two hours north. Folks, only my parents would move OUT of Miami to retire, and to a hicktown with no major airports or shopping malls, to boot. And once they move, the city of Miami and I will be finished. There will be nothing holding me there anymore, save fifteen years of bad memories, which I would be better off sublimating, anyway.

So good-bye, bad memories! Good-bye, you sad, sad suburbia! Farewell, racist, barely-literate blacks and skinheads! You won’t have ‘Phil the class chink’ to kick around anymore! Good-bye! Good riddance! I’m sure the thousands of new Haitian immigrants will only strengthen the city economy, if they don’t deplete the social services first! Sayonara!

Man, I want to go home.

WELL, IT’S BEEN A HARROWING PAST COUPLE OF DAYS HERE IN PHIL LAND. Three thunderbolts struck on Monday, one right after the other, each arguably more devastating than the last. If you don’t feel like listening to me whine in all my melodramatic glory, I suggest you skip down to the more humorous portion, which is entitled, “more humorous portion.” Otherwise…

Thunderbolt #1: The chill and mild fever I had developed on Sunday exploded into a more serious illness, and so I was bedridden just about all of Monday.

Thunderbolt #2: While lying in bed, up to my chin in thick blankets, I got a phone call from an employer I interviewed with, and politely informed that they’d chosen another candidate.

Thunderbolt #3: Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, my grandma gives me the day’s mail. Included was a letter of non-acceptance from NYU regarding a graduate program I applied to. That makes three programs I applied to since October (Two at NYU), and three consecutive rejections.

So as of now, I am totally adrift, more uncertain of my future than ever before. What do I do now? What SHOULD I do now? I can’t help feeling like a total waste of skin, bone, and other stuff. What the hell is wrong with me? Is something the hell wrong with me? And why is my nose running now, when it wasn’t running either Monday or Tuesday? I ate, like, a half-dozen oranges over the weekend, so shouldn’t I have enough Vitamin C to not get sick? Man, I wish I found God at some point in life.

Wasn’t it Harvey Pekar who said, “Life can be so fleeting, and at the same time, so sad?”

Oh yeah, I still have to attend that Christian music concert on Friday. I will attend said concert, even if I am ill, because the girl I am going with is my step-cousin, and she would never believe me if I actually backed out for a legitimate reason. Because it turns out I called in sick on her once before, for a prayer group she and another step-cousin invited me to. That’s actually a humorous story.


MORE HUMOROUS PORTION:

Two years ago, my step-cousin and another relation invited me to a prayer group meeting they were running somewhere in Brooklyn. Yeah, it’s the same borough I live in, but this was near the Navy Yard. The only way for me to get there without changing trains in Manhattan and then riding back down was to hop the F, which meant a longer bus ride. Anyway, I’m a very open-minded guy; I had every intention of attending that evening prayer meeting. Unfortunately, I was lifting dumbbells the very same morning, and only later did I realize that I gave myself a hernia.

Thanks to the hernia I gave myself, I couldn’t sit, or stand, in any subway car for more than a minute without suffering this overwhelming, insurmountable urge to vomit. And Avenue U to the Navy Yards is one LONG subway ride. Three times I got on a car on one platform, got extremely nauseous, and had to get off at the very next platform. Forty-something minutes went by, and I only managed to travel three stations. It was too ridiculous. I called, told them I had pulled something while working out, and needed to rest. Who knows if they actually believed me? But let me try that excuse again come Friday, when I still burneth at the forehead, and runneth from the nostrils.

Actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know if that story was funny, so much as personally humiliating. Perhaps one is the same as the other. Well, since I have everyone’s attention, I’d like to plug lime Gatorade, which is deee-licious, and great for dehydration. Secondly, anyone interested in spending the first week of July in Orlando, Florida? My folks have a timeshare there on alternating years, but they have no plans to occupy it this time.

IN AN EARLIER POST, I SUMMED UP MY FEELINGS REGARDING THE YET-TO-BE-RELEASED “DAWN OF THE DEAD” REMAKE WITH THE LINE, “ZOMBIES FREAK ME OUT.” Having now seen the movie, I still say zombies freak me out, but a movie where ordinary folks have fun killin’ em is a really good idea.

Director Zack Snyder (I believe he directed “The Grand Illusion”) and screenwriter James Gunn (ghostwriter for “Casablanca”) should have called the movie “Another 28 Days Later,” since the zombies resemble the juiced-up plague victims of that movie moreso than George Romero’s traditionally pokey undead. While Romero fans have criticized this radical change of formula, having zombies who run full-tilt after their human prey is what makes this movie interesting and relevant.

Traditional zombies shuffle about pathetically, slurring under their breath. A mob of them is certainly intimidating, but the fear has more to do with how weird and unworldly a sight they make. On the other hand, the sight of several dozen pissed off-looking zombies sprinting down the street is hardly unfamiliar; they are the angry mobs we see all the time in news footage beamed up from Third World countries. They are the Rwandans, the Haitians, or, more recently, the radical Sunni Muslims, brainwashed by Western-hating clerics, flocking around the burning cars of murdered American security men.

Of course, it would be un-PC to make a movie where Muslims or Africans or North Koreans are portrayed as brain dead cattle crawling over themselves to kill Americans. Maybe even more un-PC to make a movie where thousands of what could be Muslims, Africans, etc., get blasted away in the manner of a video game. “Blackhawk Down” did it first, but took its conflict between American soldiers and Mogadishu gangsters seriously. The loss of any life in “BHD,” even those of the Mogadishans, felt tragic. “Dawn of the Dead,” on the other hand, makes killing those dirty zombies fun. There are lots of shotgun blasts and heads exploding, and lots of zombies getting crushed by cars (Bonus points for three or more in a row.)

Make no mistake: You will not feel relief when our heroes blast an undead; you will cheer. I felt this movie truly nurtured my inner jingoist, the part of me that's tired of seeing those chaotic anti-American mobs on the boob-tube, wishing for a cluster bomb to explode their toothless heads open, and suffering profound disappointment when said bomb failed to fall from the sky. There were actual moments where I found myself saying aloud, "Kill 'em all, Sarah (Polley)!" Kill all the fuckers!"

If only the movie limited itself to “Blackhawk Down 2: Blackeye Dawn.” In the war movie, you didn’t need to try and give characters personality. They were soldiers, trapped in a hellish situation, and character development grew organically out of that. “Dawn of the Dead” brings in so many character “types” that it feels fake. There’s the guy who’s decent for no decent reason; there’s the total jerk; there’s the sensitive guy; the pig. I can think of about four characters who were truly memorable, and the rest were cardboard cut-outs.

On the whole, however, I suppose I enjoyed the movie. The zombie baby was a bit much, but I admire the fact that the father loved it anyway. My only gripe: I left right when the closing credits started, and didn’t find out until later than extra scenes were intercut with the end titles. Apparently, the movie didn’t end where I thought it ended. That explains why it felt like a cop-out, but the question remains: How does the movie end?

It’s 11:30, and I’ve listened to about two-and-a-half hours of Condeleeza Rice testimony before the 9/11 Committee. I’ve got to admire her poise and mobility up until now. Peppered with continuous questions as whether the Bush administration had sufficient information to prevent the World Trade Center attack, Rice bobbed and weaved like a prize fighter. Rice managed to deflect all the blame for 9/11 on the Clinton administration (She kept mentioning that Bush had to rely on the “previous administration’s” intelligence—a subtle jab at Richard Clarke—and that “previous administrations” didn’t act on the terror threat either.)

Rice also kept bringing up the “structural problems” of the intelligence community, i.e., the lack of communication between the FBI and CIA. It was also like a mantra; “There were structural problems, we have tried to fix the structural problems, etc.”

But here’s a question for Condi, regarding both the accountability of the Clinton administration, and the supposed “structural problems” of communication between the White House and the FBI: If terror activity was significantly on the rise during the summer of 2001, and it has been well-documented that it was so, shouldn’t it have especially imperative for the Dubya administration to act against terror, contrary to the supposedly “weak” anti-terror attitudes of their predecessors?

And what about the study drawn up by Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, subsequent to the change in administration? It warned that al Qaeda was more dangerous than ever, that it was imperative that something be done about al Qaeda. What, the Bush administration had time to do a 10-day standoff with China over a spy plane, and to piss off the North Koreans, but it didn’t have time to even BEGIN a strategy to counter terrorism…?

(Ooh. Condi just threw a haymaker at Richard Clarke. She says he could have requested a sit-down with the president at any time. And the committee throws a counter-punch: Why didn’t the principals get together during the summer of 2001 when intelligence, which Condi confirmed, plainly warned that a “big” attack was about to happen on U.S. soil?)

And what about this contentious August 2001 PDC report, the one actually entitled, “Bin Laden wants to attack the U.S.?” Dr. Rice says this was just “historical information” about al Queda, and did not warn at all about impending attacks by terrorist groups in the U.S.? Gee, Dr. Rice, can we make the PDC report public, the ENTIRE document, as opposed to the truncated version that the committee has been given? I don’t think so, replies Dr. Rice. Government documents are too ‘sensitive.’

(Committee has just struck again: No FBI field office has ever received any intelligence about the possibility of an attack on U.S. soil. Isn’t that the job of Defense Advisor Condi Rice? Shouldn’t she have passed the information down the food chain? Now they bring up the memo by Richard Clarke, from September 4th, which the former terrorism czar claims was an warning of an impending attack. According to Dr. Rice, it’s only a warning of ‘bureaucratic inertia,’ to quote Condi, not a warning about September 11th. Good return by committee: So what would be a warning of an impending attack, if not a document that warns, “We would hate to wake up one morning and find that al Qaeda had killed thousands of our own on American soil, and know that we could have done more…?”

(Last committee member has begun questioning Dr. Rice. He’s mentioned pushing “dead horses” out the door. Huh? Oh, the Dick Clarke memo again. Was this something Condi Rice was supposed to act on? What did she understand it to be? Rice: I viewed it as a list of suggestions… which needed decisions. …More questions than answers.

(Now Condi is defending the Bush administration’s hesitating to respond to the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. “We believed that to respond tit-for-tat would have only emboldened the terrorists.” Yes, and doing nothing at all would certainly wound their self-esteem. Ooh! The committee guy just said something like that: What would the Bush administration have done if another U.S. destroyer had been bombed in March 2001? Good for you, committee guy!)

Okay, I’m going to break from live coverage, since the hearing is clearly winding down. I can say that Condi only lost her cool briefly, when a particularly unctious Senator practically demanded that the August 2001 PDC report be made public. Clearly, her best moment came when former Nebraska senator Bob Kerrey got all dramatic about the horrible situation in Iraq. Rice reminded him that, shortly following 9/11, he wrote a "brilliant essay" which stated that the immediate course of action should be kicking Saddam Hussein out of power. (Can you believe they let that man run the New School...?) Otherwise, I doubt today’s events will negatively impact the Bush re-election campaign. We can probably look forward to four more years of bad times for non-zillionaires, because after all, when 9/11 did go down, Bush was the man at the helm.

Yesterday was April 4, 2004—04/04/04. I could be mistaken, but this might be the only 04/04/04 any of us will get to live through. Isn’t that pretty cool?

So I’m just going to write briefly about the following topic, and then I’m going to enjoy what remains of this one-in-a-thousand celestial event. I went to a family gathering last weekend, Saturday, March 27th, and half the guests were the in-laws of my uncle. This means I wasn’t related by blood to any of them. Anyway, one of my… I guess I would call them my step-cousins, asked me out to a concert next week. She and I have known each other for about three years now, and since she lives right down the avenue from me, we’ve run into each other on the bus or subway several times. She kinda looks like the female ghost played by Joey Wang in “A Chinese Ghost Story,” so there’s a chance I’ve tried to be friendly and charming. There’s also a chance my behavior may have worked on her.

Now, there’s one little catch: She’s a Christian, and very devout. There’s a silver chain and cross hanging down from her neck—actually hanging OUTSIDE her clothing. Man, that’s devout! I once called her on a Sunday morning and asked what she was doing that day. She said, “Uh, I’m going to church,” with this “What else would I be doing?” tone. I felt so stupid. Okay, I was kidding about that part.

Back to the story. This concert she invited me to go to, it’s a Christian rock concert. Christian rock. I always assumed that was an oxymoron. My only exposure in my lifetime to Christian rock was the trailer to “Titan A.D.,” which featured a song by that band that sounded kinda like Stone Temple Pilots. Yeah, I know STP sounds like Pearl Jam, but this Christian band didn’t sound like Pearl Jam, they sounded like STP. Or maybe Bush. Either way, I don’t necessarily mean that as a compliment.

I am familiar with rock music, and enough of a proponent of rock’s integrity to admit that it likely evolved from jazz. Still, in my mind, the best rock music is about rage, loneliness, or in the case of the L.A. scene, sinnin’ down the Sunset Strip. Though I am uninitiated to the ways of the devout Christian, seems to me that a religion which espouses moral purity would encompass none of these three things. Are permutations or fusions possible? Certainly they are. However, not to be sacriligious, but such an unholy marriage strikes me as the stuff of desperate p.r.—Vince Neal finding God—as opposed to the collaborating of traditionally-disenfranchised, and stoned, musicians.

Clearly, I am conflicted. On the one hand, the girl is cute. On the other hand, I’m really not looking forward to a Christian rock concert, no offense to the City College Campus Crusade for Christ, Chinese Chapter, who are hosting the event. Is it possible I am mistaken about Christian rock? I mean, if there are so many members of the C.C.C.C.C.C.C. who like that kind of music, it can’t be that bad, right? Am I right?

Feel free to share your impressions, and general opinions, whether grounded in fact or not so, regarding Christian rock.

“As Tears Go By” is a beautifully-shot tragedy about a tough kid from the streets, whose loyalty to a self-destructive childhood friend becomes his undoing.

Current Hong Kong superstar Andy Lau plays the main character. His daily schedule consists of bailing his pal (Played by versatile character actor Jacky Cheung) out of debts to various petty gangsters. Lau will not hesitate to resort to violence; his life in the grimy slums of Hong Kong is one where violence is a necessary means of survival. Lau slaps around an ex-girlfriend, goes on an alcohol-fueled rampage, and smashes one of his “little brother” Cheung’s enemies’ head open with a beer bottle. However, it soon becomes clear that Lau’s boorish behavior masks deep-rooted self-loathing, and that he is tired of constantly having to come to Cheung’s aid. Unfortunately, even after Cheung puts his life at risk by getting in deep with a big-time gangster, Lau cannot bring himself to abandon his friend.

Making things even more complicated, Lau falls in love with his cousin, who comes to stay from the mainland. She plays beauty to his beast, and her vulnerability draws Lau’s more sensitive side out. Through her, he begins to recognize a way out of his violent life. Unfortunately, the night they get all dressed up for an evening on the town, Cheung arrives unexpectedly to their apartment, bloodied up from a pool hall fight. Lau kills the other gangsters in a vicious kitchen brawl. However, when he returns home, he finds that his cousin has gone back to the mainland, unable to deal with the violent nature of his life.

Lau soon regrets choosing loyalty over love, and he leaves Hong Kong for the mainland. While he is gone, Cheung continues picking fights with gangsters. One night, he does something that makes him a veritable “walking dead man.” Word eventually reaches Lau, who has married the cousin and has put his hoodlum past behind. For Lau, the choice is loyalty vs. love again; there is the old friend whom he cannot save, no matter how many times he bails him out, versus the idyllic life he now enjoys. Lau makes his choice, and while he chooses what he feels is right, one could argue that he chooses wrong.

“As Tears Go By” was released in 1986, and was the first film directed by brilliant Hong Kong director Wong Kar-Wai. It has often been compared to Martin Scorcese’s debut film, “Mean Streets.” Both are about low-level thugs who want to rise above the murky worlds they were born into, but are constantly dragged back down by crazy childhood pals. While Kar-Wai’s movie seemingly shares a general template with its predecessor, it has a look and a feel that are uniquely its own. “Mean Streets” always struck me as having a monochromal palate. However, the Hong Kong backdrops of “As Tears Go By” are emblazoned with pink, blue, and yellow neon lights. Also, Kar-Wai has a kind of dreamy optimism often missing in Scorcese’s work. The mainland China where Lau imagines his love has gone is suggested in the brief image of two buses passing each other on a highway, surrounded by green foliage and blue sky. And the amazing opening shot of the film, a wall of television monitors projecting a perfect day along the side of a building, suggests escape from the urban hellhole to be the most perfect kind of dream.

Wong Kar-Wai’s later works are often highly-stylized, and the handheld camerawork of “As Tears Go By” is closely reproduced in his 1995 film “Fallen Angels.” Other traits that show up again in “Fallen Angels” include use of wide-angle lenses, and jerky-looking fight scenes. I found the strobe-like effect of the fights to be especially interesting. At first, it seems as if the characters are moving in slow-motion, but actually, they’re moving fast, and it is the camera which cannot keep up. As a result, the knifefight in a busy restaurant has a chaotic kind of energy. Meanwhile, the viewer, while drawn in, remains confused and disoriented, as if he/she were in the middle of the centrifuge.

The acting in the movie is uniformly very good. Andy Lau, Jacky Cheung, and Maggie Cheung—who plays the adorable cousin—all appear in Kar-Wai’s sophomore flick, the superior “Days of Being Wild.” (1990) Both Cheungs also have parts in “Ashes of Time,” (1994) and Maggie had minor clashes with Kar-Wai during the filming of “In the Mood for Love,” (2000) which she co-headlined. As for Andy Lau, he has carved out a durable career as a leading man, playing everything from action hero (Ringo Lam’s “The Adventurer”) to prosthetic-wearing clown (Johnny To’s “Love on a Diet) to sleek villain (To’s “Fulltime Killer,” Andrew Lau’s “Infernal Affairs I and III.”) He sort of resembles a Chinese John Travolta, though the “Pulp Fiction” star never had to wear a fat suit like the kind Lau wore in “…Diet.” Lau is currently considered one of the Hong Kong film industry’s true movie stars. Clearly, he makes wiser choices for his life than his “As Tears Go By” on-screen counterpart.