Photo Scavenger Hunt…Chinese Style

CONFIDENTIAL REPORT

Compiled by Oanh Vu, Amanda, and Jill Derouin

Agent: Steven R. Lemke

Mission: Complete All Listed Items

Completion of 817 Points = Care Package from Your Favorite Minnesotans

1. Steve boning atop the Great Wall of CHINA (13 pts.)
2. Bird’s Nest (4 pts.)
3. Protesters (7 pts.)
4. Eating a McDonald’s fish filet (1.5 pts.)
5. Old man with fumanshu (26 pts.)
6. Picture of the girl who really sang the anthem at the Olympics…not the cute one (35 pts.)
7. Asian Tourists in China…hopefully with FRANNY PACKS (7 pts.)
8. Picture with a Minnesotan…other than Katie (15 pts.)
9. Steve doing squinty eyes with a Chinese person (40 pts.)
10. Protesting the Government (2 pts.)
11. Really weird food (5 pts.)
12. Senior Picture on a rickshaw (6 pts.)
13. Steve getting arrested (50 pts.)
14. Using chopsticks in a non-traditional way (3 pts.)
15. Steve and Katie in traditional garb/costumes (10 pts.)
16. Chinese fortune cookie illustrated (20 pts.)
17. Exotic Chinese animal (4 pts.)
18. Steve getting SARS (12 pts.)
19. Chinese Factories…waa waa waa (7 pts.)
20. Rice Patty (2.5 pts)
21. Product Made in the U.S….that you didn’t bring with you (3 pts.)
22. Pagoda in the palm of your hand (5 pts.)
23. Stoopin’ on a Buddhist stupa (17 pts.)
24. Jade (20 pts.)
25. Defacing/Graffiti…Mao (2 pts.)
26. Chinese celebrity (8 pts.)
27. Yao Ming eating you, eating you out, or eating someone (20 pts.)
28. Chinese triplets (15 pts.)
29. Your students giving the peace sign (4 pts.)
30. Olympics! (2 pts.)
31. Steve/someone fight the terra cotta warriors (17 pts.)
32. American Celebrity (13 pts.)
33. A picture of yourself leaving America (1 pt.)
34. A picture of yourself arriving in China (2 pts.)
35. Not properly dressed for the weather (7 pts.)
36. Zombie picture (5 pts.)
37. Lick it up slut (10 pts.)
38. Where’s Waldo? (5 pts.)
39. Fake Out (11 pts.)
40. Chinese chick hookup (13 pts.)
41. Recreate a scene from Barbarella or Castle Freak (4 pts.)
42. X^{D (3 pts.)
43. Drunk (1 pt.)
44. Taking a shot from a non-traditional item (4 pts)
45. Picture with MaryAnn Baenninger…or her husband (30 pts)
46. Stealing a Chinese baby (for me…Jill) (50 pts.)
47. YMCA in front of a Chinese Monument (20 pts.)
48. Picture of yourself doing something illegal (35 pts.)
49. Weirdest form of transportation (6 pts.)
50. Steve and Ben wrestling (10 pts.)
51. Steve beating Ben in a wrestling match (priceless)
52. Steve and Katie acting out Boom Boom…I want you in my room (3 pts.)
53. Chinese Ceramics (2 pts.)
54. Worst dressed person (7 pts.)
55. Ugliest person (10 pts.)
56. Laserdisc Monday? (9 pts.)
57. Steve as a ninja (16 pts.)
58. Christmas in CHINA! Be creative… (17 pts.)
59. Tequila Thursday (Jill is so hardcore) (6 pts.)
60. SCRABBLE! (5 pts.)
61. All the blood vessels in my face feel drunk… (3 pts.)
62. Steve as a Chinese dinosaur (8 pts.)
63. Rocky pose on top of the Great Wall (10 pts.)
64. Eating hotdish…don’t cha know (20 pts.)
65. Eating a scorpion or dog (13 pts.)
66. Reinacting mortal combat (11 pts.)
67. Pokemon (5 pts.)
68. Katie drinking Steve’s tears or Steve drinking Katie’s pee (34 pts.)
69. Best Chinese holiday (6 pts.)
70. Touched by an Angel…Chinese style (16 pts.)
71. Steve arm wrestling a Chinese person (2 pts.)

Potluck Picnic in the Park

Umm… I realized I could have put this up earlier… sorry if this is the first time you see it and if you are unable to join us…

RSVP by forwarding to all in the email.  If you need the email get in contact with one of us!

Saturday, August 30th of 2008 ’round 11:00am         (For timely people that means around 12:30pm)

Hidden Valley Park
Address: 5000 132^nd Street
Hidden Valley is a 45-acre park located at Glendale Road and 132^nd Street. This community park is unique because of its natural aesthetics and ornamental qualities. The Credit River runs through the park and offers excellent opportunities for gatherings, walking, picnicking, and viewing. The park offers a large picnic shelter, volleyball court, ballfield, play equipment, and pedestrian system. (Savage, MN)           http://www.ci.savage.mn.us/DepartmentsAndServices/Parks/city_parks.html

DIRECTIONS

Go south on Interstate 169…
until you merge slightly right onto Hwy 13 Savage Exit.  Follow Hwy 13 approximately 3.5 – 4 miles, do not get faked out by signs saying Hwy 13 turns right. Turn right on Lynn at the BP and past Culver’s.  Follow straight through two stop signs and a traffic light.  After the traffic light count two possible right turns go past and turn right on the third.  Follow this straight as it curves and descends to Hidden Valley Park.

or

35W…
until you exit on Hwy 13 which says Shakopee.  Follow that approximately 1.5 miles.  You will turn left at the BP on Lynn past the Ports of Savage sign (right).  Follow straight through two stop signs and a traffic light.  After the traffic light count two possible right turns go past and turn right on the third.  Follow this straight as it curves and descends to Hidden Valley Park.

Go east on Interstate 94

until you merge slightly left onto Interstate 35W South.  Go south on 35W until you exit on Hwy 13 which says Shakopee.  Follow that approximately 1.5 miles.  You will turn left at the BP on Lynn past the Ports of Savage sign (right).  Follow straight through two stop signs and a traffic light.  After the traffic light count two possible right turns go past and turn right on the third.  Follow this straight as it curves and descends to Hidden Valley Park.

If you feel lost or confused at any time during your trip, feel free to give Megan or Amanda a call.

If you get horribly lost it can be arranged that you arrive at Amanda’s House.

Concept Album

Also, since I’ve been here I wrote a concept EP about a serial killer who falls in love and it sounds pretty sweet.  I hope to record it soon, maybe with some of my friends here playing backup, and then I’ll try and put them up here somehow.  Does anyone know if there’s a way to post songs on here?

Serial Killers

The other night a number of us were out at a bar in Takamatsu, and magically, the topic of conversation turned to serial killers.  I felt instantly at home.  I also felt that I would be able to wow the other six or seven people there with what I assumed was a vast knowledge of the greats, and I started to spout off a number of facts about serial killers in general, told them of Albert Fish’s history, etc.  Everyone seemed a bit impressed, but then, as if God had reached down and swept his hand across my heart, each person in our group admitted their own secret obsession with serial killers. 

One guy, Andy, who was consequently made famous in England by making an ass of himself on American Idol, told us how for a costume party he went as a notorious British murderer who worked as a nursemaid so she could torture and kill infants.  My other friend, Ciaran, told me how he became so obsessed with Charles Manson that he almost bought some of Manson’s drawings through an online auction.  Even one of the girls, Holly, drunkenly slurred that she thought that Ted Bundy was hot.  My jaw dropped.  “I think Ted Bundy is hot!” I replied.  I also learned of some of the most prolific serial killers in history, all of whom I had never even heard, like Coral Eugene Watts, who killed merely for sport by stabbing or strangling women quickly then leaving the scene so that by the time he was caught years after he began his career, he had killed possibly 80 women. 

What I, and hopefully everyone reading this, can learn from this experience is that really, everyone is fucked in the head to a certain extent.  Most people, whether they’d like to admit it or not, are secretly drawn to this oft-reviled part of our humanity because it represents something that they fear and respect at the same time.  One wonders what it would be like to have no compassion for other humans, to be unable to feel anything unless he or she takes another’s life.  A simple analogy is that feeling one gets while standing at the edge of a cliff or tall building.  There is an immediate sense of terror that strikes, sending a nauseating tingle throughout one’s entire being.  The immediate instinct is to step back to avoid confrontation with such a fear because such a fear is uncomfortable and causes us to come to terms with our own mortality.  Still, one remains planted to that spot, teetering on the edge, strangely tempted to jump in spite of every bit of their common sense urging them to turn away. 

Most, however, listen to themselves and eventually leave that brief moment of animal lust that somehow overcame them.  They go back to safer, lower ground and ignore that unexplainable shame they feel for even considering what their body craved to do.  They go back to their society, with its set of learned rules, and follow them as close as possible, occasionally breaking them through slightly lesser taboos by jacking off to pictures of a woman being sexually violated, beating their child as a form of stress relief, or indulging for a night in a number of drugs.  Others, however, do jump, and feel somehow relieved as they fall through that broad expanse of sky, sucking down that fresh, untouched air before breaking over the jagged rocks that wait for them below.

I am returned

Well, I made it back stateside with almost no hang ups.  Jet lag isn’t being too much of a bitch, but I can’t manage to sleep past 6am (so I’m bloggin’).

This is interesting: On one of our last days in Kathmandu, Nepal I was attacked by a temple monkey at Swayambhunath.  It was a provoked attack (a kid was throwing rocks at it) and now I’m starting my rabbies vaccination series.  So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.  I was really freaked out at the first place I went right away to have to checked out.  It was this pharmacy where you bought your medicine and you went to the back of the building and up some stairs to this little room where there is a doctor, a nurse and an old Nepali man hooked up to oxygen on a gurney.  Fortunately Kesang Yudron (08 CSB grad who lives in Kathmandu) was with me so that I could communicate with this doctor, who didn’t speak English.

So, yeah.  Adventures abound.  I’m happy to be home.  I think I’ll be in the cities Wednesday though Friday.   It would be nice to see some people before school starts.  Maybe have some sort of get together?  I want to see everyone’s new places.

Oh, and by the way, Vagina Dentata is real.

http://www.vagident.co.uk/

Vagina Dentata

So I’m not sure if any of you have heard of the movie “Teeth”, but saw it this summer and you all should see it as well.  It will blow your mind.  Also, I was looking at a list of the most controversial films ever, and there was one called “Cannibal Holocaust”.  I haven’t seen it yet, but I think the name speaks for itself.  Japan is incredible and I’ll update my blog soon, hopefully.

Why you should never trust critics’ blurbs on movie covers

On the back of the VHS cover for the movie, “Troll,” is this blurb from Janet Maslin’s review in the New York Times: “…great…funny without trying. Good natured…as funny as it gets…”

This is the paragraph from the actual review that uses those words:

“”TROLL’ takes its inspiration, if it can be called that, from those late, great, bargain-basement science-fiction films that managed to be funny without trying. Innocence like that is not easily imitated, as ”Troll” unwittingly demonstrates time and again. Directed by John Buechler, whose background is in creature-related special effects, and written by Ed Naha, ”Troll” has a knowing tone that’s more smart-alecky than clever. And it hovers uncomfortably between comedy and horror, without ever landing decisively in either camp. The film is as funny as it gets in a sequence that has Sonny Bono pretending to be a great ladies’ man.”

Oh, and needless to say, “Troll” rules: get it on LaserDisc if you can.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092115/

Our Very Own Shari

Hey guys, check it out!  Our very own Shari made it onto the website for Minnesota Fringe 2008.  Bravo, Shari, Bravo!

http://www.fringefestival.org/2008/slideshows/day7/

Photograph #14

Midi Reunion Saturday?

I don’t know about the rest of you but I need a little midi in my life. Who’s in?