I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being The Master

Part Seventeen

2009-05-10T18:53:00.000-07:00

The Komodo Diaries

The flight to Denpasar is over before I know it. My plan to take the first taxi whose driver doesn’t try to shout me down fizzles when EVERY taxi driver [and some guys just standing around, no taxi anywhere in sight] get a load of the Big White Walking Dollar Sign and bombard me with a hundred “friendly” offers. I wade through the mess and set out on foot.

Even though Alexandros warned me about the hike from the airport to the nearest hotels, etc. by the time I reach signs of civilization (and a string of eerily silent hotels whose attendants on duty glance up from their televisions long enough to wave me away. "Full!") I am both extremely hot and severely bothered.

In frustrating times like this, there’s something truly satisfying about stalking Indonesian streets at night with a surly expression and a big bottle of Bintang. Consuming alcohol in public might be less of an affront to Balinese culture than Javanese, but it still feels really good.

When You Visit Denpasar: Be sure to check out the fumes welling up from the cracked sidewalk. Their odor specialists have succeeded in blending the unmistakable stench of human feces with the unforgettable reek of sulfur. The results may surprise you!

Buildings on the main drag range from “semi-nice” to “crumbling”. [“Jesus, Denpasar...! At least Jogja had a major earthquake three years ago. What’s your excuse?”] I eventually find a cheap(ish) hotel for the night. The room is shabby, but the bed is comfortable and I prepare to wake up early, catch the local bus back to the airport, and book my flight to Labuanbajo.

The bed is too comfortable. And I fail to reset my [cell phone’s] clock to reflect the one-hour Java/Bali time difference. I sleep late.

I arrive to the airport at 10:20. The only flight(s) to Labuanbajo left at 10:00. Tomorrow’s flights are full. The next direct flight to Labuanbajo leaves in three days. Faced with the prospect of two more nights in this ugly pile, I promptly buy a ticket to Mataram. [I think: “Lombok is a step in the right direction!”]

In Mataram I learn that today’s Labuanbajo flights left in the morning, tomorrow’s are all either canceled or full, and the next direct flight is in three days. At this point a smarter man might take the hint, see a few days of Lombok, and take the ‘in three days’ flight. Instead, I investigate My Other Options for getting there:

Flying is out. A boat will take far too long. They haven’t perfected amphibious train technology here yet, which just leaves The Bus. Travel time to get across Lombok, take a ferry to Sumbawa, and get across Sumbawa is about 12 hours, I am told. From there it’s one more ferry to Labuanbajo (on Flores), where one must charter a boat to Komodo and Rinca. It sounds simple enough. I book it.

While the hotel room in Mataram is comfortable I can’t quite call it “clean”. Shortly after entering the room I detect the sound of tiny claws on the ultra-thin “wood” of the ceiling directly above the head/pillow area of the bed. Scritch-scritch-scritch. Scritch-scritch-scritch-scritch. Further exhausted by the imagined ordeal of asking for another room, I check for possible points of entry –there are none, unless the rat wants to drop seven feet onto my face– and resolve to sleep with headphones on. The headphones become an even bigger necessity when I learn that the noise is NOT in fact a nest of tropical rats. Turns out it’s a new litter of mewling kittens!

The excitement of sleeping in a real bed [even if it is a lumpy hotel bed] continues. In the morning, as I’m checking out, I try and explain to the guy behind the desk about the kittens. My halting Indonesian is insufficient, so we walk back and I show him the sound. He regards me blankly. It’s strange to me, but he finds a nest of kittens scratching the ceiling and crying all night utterly unremarkable, unworthy of even a perfunctory shrug.

Mataram is a great city for signs. Not only do I spy a license plate that reads DR ROCK, but also a motorcycle repair shop called CAT OVEN and a restaurant advertised only by plain signs that read “SEA FOOD AROMA”.

We board the bus late in the afternoon. Lombok flies by and I chat with James and Hanna, a couple of nice British kids touring Asia. Soon we’re all huddled under jackets against the harsh air conditioning, desperately trying to sleep. 15 hours later, we stumble groggily out into the port at Sape. Rows of big trucks line the parking lot. The truck stop warung does not look promising.

It had been suggested to us that we would arrive at Sape around 7:00 AM and would board the 8:00 AM ferry to Labuanbajo. Our first clue that the tour company may not have given us ALL the details of the journey comes when the guy overseeing the bus ride collects our tickets and the bus disappears. Unsure how to proceed, I ask some of the old men with faces like wadded-up lunch meat selling overpriced water and snacks about the 8:00 ferry. They chuckle to one another. No, they tell me, the only ferry comes at 5:00 PM.

At this point it starts to look like the tour company in Mataram completely fucked us*. [WHY did I have to sleep for that extra hour in Bali??] I have never wanted a Round Table Pizza as much as I do right now. *Turns out they didn't. Oops!

The sun has reached full intensity by the time I venture out to explore the dusty main drag leading to the ferry stop, a depressing little slab of small-town Hell. I knew this kind of place must exist outside of movies but I never expected to find it in this part of the world. This photograph makes this place look about 1,000 times cooler than it actually is:

I mistakenly wander into a cool, clean warung and sit down at a table before realizing this place is the social nerve center for the town. The other patrons crowd around me to make their introductions and ask the same handful of questions that every Indonesian asks as a matter of course (Name, Rank, Country Of Origin, Marital Status, etc.). In a surreal moment, a group of local teachers enter in matching tracksuits to get a celebratory juice after a successful sporting event. [Later I will regret not asking what sport gets played so early on a Sunday morning. Or, I would regret it if I cared.] I drink my Coke and beat a hasty retreat.

Accounts vary, but I have either seven or eight hours more to wait until the ferry arrives. Somewhere in there I scrawl in my notes: “Best thank your God I’m not armed, folks. This town would look great with the bodies of every human I’ve seen here strewn across its streets.”

Nearly 2:00 PM. Three hours to go, approaching ‘crunch time’. I need to silence the incredulous part of my brain that keeps asking if the ferry ride could possibly REALLY take 8 hours. “Have you learned nothing on this trip?” I scoff at it, “Of course it could!” [Spoiler alert: The ferry ride doesn’t take 8 hours. It takes 8½!]

The Labuanbajo ferry arrives at 6:00 PM and finally departs a little before 8:00 PM. On the ferry I meet British Steve, an amiable bloke given to sneering terrible jokes. [My personal favorite was one I’d heard before. Q: “How long does it take for an English woman to have an orgasm?” A: “WHO FUCKING CARES?” A charming man.] I manage to sleep for about 30 minutes at a time folded around my backpack on the bench seat, when not staring blearily at the Indo HBO playing on the TV. While The Next Karate Kid is still an absolute turd, I’m pleased to report that Michael Ironsides chews more than enough scenery to make up for teenage Hillary Swank’s truculent horse-face.

Except for the ferry and the mosques, Labuanbajo seems to be asleep when we roll in at about 4:30 AM on May 4th. [For anyone keeping track of days, the answer is YES. All the bus action only got me there about 4 more hours than just waiting for the next flight would have. You shut up now!] James and Hanna hop another bus and I wander the streets with British Steve. We roust some hotel employees and get a room to grab a few more hours of sleep.

Labuanbajo is oriented like any coastal tourism town, with one main drag running parallel to the ocean. But there are many boats and the horizon is filled with distant islands. The people don’t hustle me for anything on sight. This place makes good on everything I imagined I would find in a country made up of 17,000 islands.

I walk around and make some inquiries about booking a boat to Komodo or Rinca (smaller island, closer than Komodo Island, also part of the park). I shy away from the package group tours and book a one-day trip to Rinca.

Later in the day British Steve and I have some lengthy conversations about world affairs over meals of tasty seafood (like the slab of tuna pictured above). As usual in chats like this, I listen politely while he pontificates and interject my two cents when called upon. Steve has some interesting theories about the human race – he’s traveling around the world to find a good place to ride out the impending apocalypse! He’s also fond of referring to people as representatives of their nation’s government. (“When you lot went into Iraq…”) I bristle at this. Is it a uniquely ‘liberal American’ thing to feel disconnected from (and to avoid association with) the actions of one’s government? “Hang on, man. The United States government is just as much a ‘they’ to me as it is to you!”

In the morning I bid British Steve farewell (he is traversing Flores by motorcycle) and walk to the docks to meet Hut and [Hut's brother, whose name I forget to write down], my boat chauffeurs.

Their boat is slow, so the ride to Rinca takes around 2½ hours. This is fine, though, because our route takes us through a dreamlike stretch of water with anonymous islands on all side; green, mysterious, seemingly uninhabited. It’s an incredibly peaceful time, save for the twinges of fierce loneliness. [I silently promise never to travel alone again, especially to a place like this.] However, I have enough time to weigh all the factors carefully and my ultimate decision is that the boat ride would be improved for everyone (in the world) if we spent it slurping red wine + Limeade and blasting some Lil Wayne.

The travel books overstate Rinca’s desolation. For the most part it reminds me of Northern California. My guide, Suryman, is a friendly young guy who speaks good English and makes it very clear that we have no guarantees of seeing ANYTHING, but he’ll do his best. We set out on the longer path, a hike that runs just shy of two hours.

The terrain is mostly easy, running through bright forests, rocky riverbeds, and grassy hills. After the first few times Sulyman warns me about the huge patches of water buffalo shit in the path I automatically revert to my normal hiking posture, head mostly down, picking my steps along the path. So I almost run into Sulyman’s back when he stops abruptly and whispers: “Dragon!” Caught off guard I jerk my head left, right, all around until I see it. There is a Komodo dragon standing in the middle of the path, about 25 feet directly in front of us. The goddamn thing’s well over five feet long and I probably would have stepped on it before I realized what it was. We watch as it ambles into the underbrush and I take some awestruck pictures:

This is the first of three dragons we see. Shortly after this, noise from the boisterous French ladies behind us drifts through the forest to us. In a rare show of Indonesian disgust, Sulyman shakes his head. “They are stupid people”, he says. “They talk so loud! The animals hear it, they go away!” We pick up the pace until they’re out of earshot.

The second dragon is laying low in the shade of a tree to cool down. It is person-sized. When we get close it shoots us a slit-eyed look of what I choose to interpret as disdain, as if we would be totally uninteresting to kill.

We hike on. The valleys are all monkeys and buffalo watering holes:

The last dragon we see is laid out at the edge of the forest, near the end of the hiking path. Sulyman identifies her as female and estimates that her swollen belly probably contains an entire deer. She breathes slowly and raises her head about once a minute to heave a great sigh. Each time she does this it appears as if she is trying to stand, calling out in the mushmouthed Augustus Gloomp voice we used to use to characterize Ben’s cat Jeff: “Oh, I would kill you good if I -oof- wasn’t so full of -oomph- bacon grease and chocolate!”

The next day I assume that it will be easy to charter another boat to one of the other islands in the neighborhood. No dice! Everyone wants more notice and no one wants to leave the same day. No worries, though, Labuanbajo is a fine place to bum around in for one more day. I watch the boats, eat more tasty fish, plan the rest of the week, and generally collect my thoughts… [This last point is a bit frustrating since I’ve had about 8 MONTHS to collect my thoughts. Trust me, my thoughts have never been more fully collected. I itch for action.] Still, it's hard to complain about sights like this:

I learn two interesting things about the hotel on my last day in Labuanbajo. First, all the construction noise we’ve been hearing is actually demolition noise. A crew of four guys is collapsing the brick walls at the back of the hotel with sledgehammers, sledging the knocked-down wall into pieces, and tossing the debris into a pit behind them. During my stay they have removed a skeletal staircase (leading to an already-demolished second story). Now they’ve worked their way back through Room #9… #8… and from the shower in Room #6 it sounds as if they’ve already breached #7. I’m getting out of here none too soon. I made it this far without getting killed! To get clocked in the head by flying bricks while crouched over one of Hotel Mutiara’s horrid toilets would be a disappointing fate. WHICH REMINDS ME…

A Note To The Proprietors of Hotel Mutiara (Labuanbajo, Flores - Indonesia)

On behalf of all Westerners, let me say: the traditional Indo squat toilet is fine. We can take it. And the standard Western toilet one sits on? Fine too, of course! The body of a Western-style toilet with no tank and no seat that one must awkwardly half-squat, half-stand over to use, where one must cross their fingers the first time because one has never been required to aim like this before? Yeah, you might want to look into replacing those. Westerners can handle the Indo toilet, no need to try and "meet us halfway" there. Halfway is worse.

ANYWAY... The other thing I learn is that the tiny creature I’ve seen scuttle into the drain hole every time I open the bathroom door is not -as I had assumed- a frog or -as I had feared- a rat. It is, in fact, a slimy black crab.

For fun (and because I don’t really have time for much else today) I go directly to the airport after breakfast, arriving about 4 ½ hours before my flight leaves. Oh, but the call comes shortly after that- the flight has been delayed! Make that 5 ½ hours. Maybe my will has been fully beaten down after so much time here, but I’m not even upset by this news. If nothing else had gone wrong, THAT would have been surprising...

Up next: The final week. Darmasiswa closing ceremony in Jakarta, goodbyes, conclusions, etc.
All posted weeks after the fact! Also, there's a new mix posted here.

Part Sixteen

2009-04-30T01:52:00.000-07:00

“And Now We Enter... End Game.”

The end is near.

My original plan was to stick around for about a week after Second Semester ended. This would have put me back in Portland around the end of June. The hefty payday from Merah Putih made balancing the benefits of my studies and the annoyances of day-to-day life much easier, and my mood had drastically improved.

However, something unexpected [and awesome] happened: I got offered A JOB at home. A super-flexible job with awesome guys I used to work with that seems tailor-made for working around projects, finishing school, etc. I enthusiastically accepted and began the arrangements for a mid-May return.

Even though a premature evacuation crossed my mind a few times before, I always put the thought aside because –as hard as living here has been at times- leaving this thing unfinished would just be LAME. The decision to come back for an ideal job situation was an easy one, but misgivings about the LAMENESS of ditching out early persisted for a few days. Until –as so often happens with me- I talked myself out of any problems.

Q: "HAVE I ACCOMPLISHED WHAT I SET OUT TO ACCOMPLISH BY COMING HERE?"

A: Well… I wanted to learn about a totally different type of performance, different way of telling a story, designing characters, a different way of playing music, and how those elements interact. Admittedly, I didn’t learn much about the history/philosophical details about wayang tradition(s) because a) my Indonesian is still insufficient for following a University lecture, and b) that stuff doesn’t really interest me. My goal was a more intuitive understanding of the art form, and I believe I achieved that. In a way, this was a fact-finding mission; I viewed most things here through the lens of my art, noting the relevant/inspiring parts and politely ignoring (or just tolerating) the rest.

And, of course, outside of school I’ve amassed enough ideas for art and music projects to keep me busy for years. So… in the end, my time here has been fruitful in all the ways I’d hoped. And more."

Once I realized I had satisfied my main goals for coming here, my apprehension about cutting out before the end of the semester faded away. Everything, it seems, is looking up. I fly out of Jakarta around 10 PM on May 14th and (through the magic of time zones and long-distance travel) I arrive 18-20 hours later at 8 AM on May 15th. That's it!

Coming next: final thoughts, the Darmasiswa closing ceremony in Jakarta, and a detailed account of my solo voyage to Komodo National Park, the only Indonesian locale I feel a strong, inexplicable need to see.

Part Fifteen

2009-04-05T10:26:00.000-07:00

"War Were Declared"

MARCH: For a few weeks my studies here take a backseat to more pressing matters, namely getting paid [with a capital PAID] as an extra in another Indonesian movie.

I neglected to mention my first gig as an extra here… Back in December the makers of Ketika Cinta Bertasbih needed some white faces to add “international” flavor to a crowd during a wedding scene. For Rp. 300,000 a day we (some Darmasiswa friends and I) were happy to oblige:

Sadly, no photo can truly capture the feeling of listening to the same Indonesian ballad on repeat for the entire ELEVEN HOURS we were there.

We were told that the film would come out in March, but there’s been no sign of it yet. Alex and I may have to wait a little longer to see our December beards plastered across a big screen.

Filming for Merah Putih* is… a different experience. This one’s a war epic chronicling Indonesia’s bloody struggle for independence in 1947 and they need bule to play Dutch soldiers. They need us to run around in uniform being white and perpetrating atrocities until Indonesian rebels slaughter us all. This turns out to be precisely as awesome as it sounds.

*Red and White, AKA The Colors Of The Indonesian Flag, AKA The Colors Of Our Necks And Torsos After 5+ Days Filming In The Sun

The filmmakers are throwing jaw-dropping amounts of money [in Indonesian terms, anyway] at this thing, putting the 200+ person crew up at decent hotels, providing all of our meals and transportation, and the lowly extras get Rp. 1,000,000 for each day of “work”. [If that number sounds familiar, that’s because it’s my monthly Darmasiswa living stipend.]

The first weekend of shooting is in Semarang (2 hours north of Jogja). While Semarang leaves something be desired as a town [the rats are bolder than in Jogja and the city air carries a piquant odor I’d describe as ‘boiled piss’], the shooting location is an awesome old colonial building with cavernous hallways and some nice stained-glass windows:

I’m don’t arrive in Semarang until the end of the week, so I miss out on the rapes and the village bullying. :( From what I can tell, the weekend’s filming centers on three Indonesian dudes (one a 12 years old boy) sneaking into the Dutch outpost and killing everyone. My own onscreen activity during this time breaks down as follows:

1) Lay facedown in a hallway as the corpse of someone killed the previous day. The “blood” on my back is pungent strawberry syrup.

2) Stroll down a hallway and pretend to idly chat with one Indonesian dude who maintains a vicious sourpuss for the entire production.

3) Patrol a village with one of the actual Dutch guys playing a Dutch soldier.

4) Stand guard outside an outpost, scan the horizon, size up one of the rebels as he approaches the entrance.

Over the course of three days I see <>30hours reading, writing, sleeping, eating, and just sitting around waiting. It’s painfully boring, but we all hold onto the same thought:

Q: “What did you do today?”

A: “Nothing. Oh… wait, no. I did make a million Rupiah. But other than that, nothing.”

Here we see Vlado and Esteban mistreating one of the locals. I believe Vlado’s expression is inappropriately tender:

The days in Semarang are fun [and lucrative!], but on the following weekend we get the call about more shooting, this time for a seven-day engagement in Bandungan. [“Chuh-chinnnggggg!!!!!”] Once again, I miss out on the real mayhem: the day before we arrive, the rest of Holland's surliest, hardest-raping recruits get to burn down a village and brutalize more of the villagers. :( :( :(!!!

Bandungan is the site of one of the film’s biggest action sequences:

The Dutch convoy rolls down a hill, crosses a small bridge, and finds the road blocked by a herd of goats. A few soldiers hop out to clear a path when the alarm goes up: “Ambush!” One rebel appears and plants a bomb on the side of a tanker truck. He leaps heroically off the bridge as the truck explodes.

Rebels open fire on the convoy from the surrounding hills. Half the soldiers in the main troop transport are killed immediately. The others assume defensive positions and are also gunned down.

At the same time, a band of rebels storms the back of the convoy. Their leader 1) throws a knife into a Crying Dutchman’s chest, 2) throws a grenade that blows up another truck, 3) delivers three flashy slashes across a second soldier’s chest, wielding his machete samurai-style, 3) leaps onto the hood of the jeep to better hack at a third soldier (possibly decapitating him?), and 4) triumphantly raises his fist and bellows –flames billowing behind him- “MERDEKAAAAAAAA!”

Then the rebels blow up the rest of the Dutch trucks all in a row BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!! BOOM!!!!

We arrive on Saturday night. Sunday morning is spent warming up and learning some basic falls and bullet reactions from the team of Australian stuntmen:

The second day, we mill around at the village location as they film one soldier getting stabbed. Deciding which of us to stab, setting up the shot, and filming three takes somehow takes the entire day.

That night, the phone in our hotel room rings: our call is at 5 AM. We groan a bit, but prepare to wake up early.

A few minutes later, the phone rings again: call has been pushed forward to 4 AM.

A few minutes after that the phone rings again and the others beg me not to answer it.

Of course I do. 3:30 AM!

Of course, in the morning when we’re all ready to go at 3:30 we’re told we won’t be leaving until 4:00 (and once there, shooting starts well after 9:00). We’re all unclear if this is normal movie-person double-speak or if it’s a uniquely Indonesian thing.

The bulk of our day is spent in the back of a truck. The convoy trundles down the hill, someone yells “CUT”, the convoy reverses all the way back up the hill, and we wait about an hour until they’re ready for the next take.

This is the lead jeep, the truck with the soldiers in it, and the tanker truck, as seen from the top of the hill (where we spend most of our time hanging out, waiting):

I’m mildly alarmed when I learn that we’ll be sitting in the truck when they blow up the tanker and that my position at the back of the truck gives me a front-row seat for the explosion. The scene goes off without incident, though. No limbs lost, no lasting trauma.

Except for the explosions –which are always fun- the rest of filming is pretty mundane. All the action at the back of the convoy occupies much of the crew’s attention, so it takes them two days more than expected to complete the post-explosion shootout where we are (though I do have to spend hours laying ‘dead’ in the spot where I will have died, as background for some scenes that take place after the ambush).

My ‘big scene’ has me crouching behind the truck firing a 30.06 at the hills. One of my buddies gets shot, I shoot back a few times, and am shot in the back. This requires two squibs (exploding blood packs) for entry and exit wounds. When they rig you up with these they use lots of tape:

The shot apparently goes well, since they only do it once. With a little luck my expression of panic over having never shot a rifle before will translate into believable panic about getting shot at.

A nice moment - on Sunday afternoon a thick mist rolls down from the hills, blotting out everything for a few hours. I know this is a thing that happens in this part of the world, but it’s an exciting thing to actually experience:

It’s unclear exactly when Merah Putih will be released, and in what format. We heard it would be a six-part television miniseries here, we heard there would be a feature-length version released to theaters… Either of these [or neither] Rumor has it Partai Demokrat is rallying to get it released in time for the presidential elections in July. (Propogan-tastic!)

Adventures In Indonesian Television #1

While filming Merah Putih I get the chance to watch a lot of Indonesian television in the hotel room. I posted some photos earlier from of a country music special featuring an all-Indonesian band, singers, line dancers, etc. I jokingly refer to this as Jakarta City Limits, but I have no idea what it is really called or why it exists.

At any hour of the day, chances are good that at least half your available channels are showing a different inane soap opera where hurt women look longingly/accusingly at unhappy men. These are unwatchable, except when the characters have bizarre physical traits, like wild facial hair or crazy eyes.

For example, we saw enough of this soap opera to ascertain that it was awful in spite of this girl’s huge scar:

Adventures In Indonesian Television #2

I was floored by a commercial for feminine hygiene products in which the severity of each girl in the commercial’s "flow" is illustrated with a gaily-colored CGI icon floating over her shoulder.

The first teenage-looking girl has a wobbly watering can floating next to her, spilling a few tiny drops. The next has an overful bucket that sloshes more cartoon water out from side to side.

Cut to the beautiful spokeswoman explaining the product’s efficiency. As she stands, her secret shame materializes next to her: she is currently gushing like a high-pressure shower head turned on full blast; the imaginary torrent runs down the entire length of her body.

Is this any more bizarre than the tried-and-true American method of illustrating absorbency by dumping a vial of blue liquid onto the product in some sterile lab? Now that I think about it, I'm not quite sure.

Entire blogs and books could be –and no doubt have been- devoted entirely to the ways non-native speakers blithely abuse the English language. This is usually good for a cheap laugh. For example:

But, like in the Patton Oswalt bit about the poetry of p0rn emails, Indonesian writers’ errors often achieve a peculiar quality unavailable to those with even a basic understanding of grammar.

Case in point: The incredible slogan for a DJ event held at Jogja nightclub Papillon, a slogan emblazoned across a banner over the entrance and on the t-shirts of all the club’s employees that evening, a string of words you could almost call a sentence. The banner says:

THE LEGEND WILL ALWAYS A LEGEND

NEVER CHANGE AND NO ONE CAN EVER CHANGE

I can’t choose a favorite part of this. The mysterious reference to The Legend is rich, but the menacing last line “AND NO ONE CAN EVER CHANGE” tickles me to no end. I’m going to assemble a To The Neck comp and call it The Legend Will Always A Legend Never Change And No One Can Ever Change.

O, horrible! O, horrible! Most horrible!

2009-03-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

Part Fourteen

2009-03-05T09:32:00.000-08:00

"...And A Lot Is Always Going On."

Busy days! Second semester begins and my mood improves tremendously. In the 1+ month since my last classes, I had started to lose sight of why I’m here. The return to school is a welcome reminder: while I would never consider living in Jogja on a permanent basis, it is absolutely the place I want to be studying right now. Unproductive thoughts and mutterings about an early evacuation have been banished. Dad's visit was brief (or seemed brief since I was stupidly busy for so much of it) but it really helped. What we'll call a difficult situation stateside notwithstanding, I'm officially back on track for a fruitful second semester here.

To this end, it is exciting to finally acquire a decent wayang for practicing at home. The Kongsudewo wayang pictured below is the nicest I can find at the remote leatherworking place my classmate Wuharno takes me [which still places it a few serious quality grades below the ones we use in class]. The craftsman replaces the kapet [the handle + spine of the puppet] while we’re there by warming the strand of buffalo horn over a gas lamp and bending it to conform to the shape of the leather figure. It’s a simple but impressive display of skill.

Danang is explaining different Ramayana characters to me before class one day [their names, family tree, temperament, and vocal characterization] when he gets to Drona, a dandy fop with a hilarious little hand articulated at the wrist.

Danang: “He is… very rich. And he fuck… horse!”

Justin: “Uh… he fucks whores? Or do you mean he fucks a horse?”

Danang: “Horse! His wife… horse. Clip-clop, clip-clop. Horse!”

As he tells it, Drona is the Kurawa teacher of war and ‘spiritual images'. Drona’s wife is a shape-shifter, so when she assumes the form of a horse he uses her to ride across the island on which they live. But along the way he sometimes becomes confused and… one thing leads to another.

This mural is located a few blocks from my house, on the side of what I think is a Laundromat. It’s probably my favorite piece of public art in Jogja, mostly because it reminds me of the dreary illustrations in one of my favorite books from childhood, about a group of Halloween monsters that form a rock and roll band. [The book itself was folded up accordion-style and unfolded to reveal one long image on the back. Does anyone know what it’s was called? Buddy? Anyone?]

This is the first song from the second (and apparently final?) Kilat Khusus performance. There were sound issues, but the sound was an improvement over the first one. [Read: it was way louder.] Carla returned to Australia this week* but our brief collaboration led to a lot of really pleasing moments. And there’s a Myspace for it.

* :(

Random Sights Worth Mentioning

-Riding on Jl. Bantul early in the morning, I pass a shriveled little Javanese woman carrying a woven basket piled high with home-made knives.

-On the motorbike ride to the village leather guy’s shop, a shirtless dude with a big, curly Danny McBride mullet stands by the side of the road. He has a spray bottle in one hand and is spraying water on the birds flitting about the cage in the gravel at his feet. [Is this how birds drink? That doesn’t seem right.]

-Waiting to turn onto a busy street in the morning, a couple on a motorcycle stops at the light in front of me. Their storage compartments (two bamboo boxes/cages affixed to the back of the bike, effectively tripling its width) are overflowing with chickens. The chickens’ dark coloration is similar enough that, crammed together like this, their shapes are confused and they become one heaving, living mass, like some nightmare witch’s skirt. I make slow eye contact with the woman. She sees my fear.

-Out on a date* and walking around the city, we pause on a bridge. The thing that runs through parts of Jogja isn’t exactly a river… it’s more of a stream with undetermined parts water and sewage that trickles between tall concrete walls, with sprawling complexes of Indo hovels on either side. Bridges’ illumination falls just a few shades short of a blacklight, casting an alien glow about the area that almost –but not quite- masks the creamy brown of the “water” rushing by.

We stare down. “God, that’s disgusting,” the girl says, and I agree. It is a genuinely pleasant moment. And then, as if on cue, a guy emerges from the shadows of the bridge, drops his pants, and proceeds to take a long, leisurely shit into the water directly below us.

*Don’t get excited. This was an isolated incident; that person studies far, far away from here. The ‘08-‘09 Year Of Solitude Tour shows no signs of interruption.

TO THE NECK "Podcast" Mix 2

Huun-Huur-Tu “Prayer”

John Zorn “Virgin Sacrifice”

Björk “Where Is The Line (Fantomas Mix)

Death Ambient “Thermohaline”

Bonnie “Prince” Billy “The World’s Greatest”

Tanya Tagaq “Construction”

Dirty Projectors + David Byrne “Knotty Pine”

Tripping Daisy “Waited A Light Year”

Brian Eno + Robert Fripp “The Heavenly Music Corporation”

Dälek “Street Diction”

Atlas Sound “Children's Hospital (Screaming in the Face of Death #2)”

Area “Gerontocrazia”

Fever Ray "I'm Not Done"

Let's Keep It Cold

2009-02-19T09:29:00.000-08:00

My dream on Tuesday night takes the form of what dream intuition tells me is a new Tarantino film.

The story centers around a [mostly black] gang in the 60's. They dress colorfully, like 20-something versions of Fat Albert And The Cosby Kids. The gang is forced to take a break from dodging the cops and getting into light criminal mischief when they learn about a series of kidnappings (all infants) in their neighborhood. They suspect a rival gang is behind it and they set about solving the mystery!

The gang splits up to search for clues. We follow each group of kids as they walk around the city and engage in clever banter. The soundtrack is heavy on 60's summertime favorites. Along the way, we also get some tasteful allusions to the broader struggles going on with the civil rights movement, etc. The film's tone is playful, with moments of gritty darkness. It's great.

While investigating, the gang runs afoul of another [slightly preppy, mostly white] gang. The conflict between the two groups is fiercest between two heavyset girls: the Sassy, Relatable, Heavyset Black Girl and the Bitchy, Heavyset White Girl.

Toward the end of the film, SRHBG has a big epiphany and runs through the neighborhood (in one long tracking shot) until she finds the one remaining neighbor with a baby. She snatches the baby away and runs back out through the neighborhood with it (still one long shot) in what we assume is a ruse to flush out the real kidnapper. Of course, the other gang has taken it upon themselves to also guard the neighborhood and BHWG suddenly appears and gives chase.

Both girls exert themselves over the course of a lengthy foot chase, trading verbal barbs between heavy breaths all the way. They end up alone in an abandoned building of some kind. SRHBG puts the baby down somewhere and the two heavy girls square off for their Final Showdown.

The ensuing fight is brutal, but with lots of anime high-jumping. When she seems poised to win, BHWG leaps into the air to deliver a final punch and sneers: "Remember when you said you were going to kick my ass?" [She is referencing a previous scene, in which SRHBG muttered something that sounded a lot like that as she exited a room.]

"No", the , Relatable, Heavyset Black Girl corrects her, "I said I was going to KILL your ass."

SRHBG fast-draws a sawed-off baseball bat out of nowhere and cracks BHWG gruesomely across the skull before she can land another punch. After several more jarringly serious, not-at-all-cinematic blows to the head, BHWG falls back onto a small table, her arms out at her sides. A man's arms snake up and loop around her arms, pinning her into place.

What appeared to be a table is in fact a ritualistic wooden cage with a table top. A nondescript white dude who was hanging out in the background of the [mostly-black] gang scenes is hunched over inside it, facing straight ahead [this means he and BHWG are now back-to-back with their arms intertwined and the tabletop between them]. It becomes clear that a) he is a vampire, and b) he has been taking the babies to feed on them and SRHBG has been helping him. But he's very embarrassed and shows real remorse about having to do this.

He has huge, twisted fangs that curl out of his mouth [like Batman in Batman: Year 100*]. His jaw has opened to an impossible angle and the upper fangs are embedded in a wide piece of wood, like a second, lower level to the table. The camera focuses on his pained expression as he waits for blood to run down onto the lower level of the table, into his open mouth. As SRHBG bludgeons BHWG to death with the bat, it does.

That's the end of the movie.

*Like this:

Part Thirteen

2009-02-08T03:26:00.000-08:00

No One Speaks English And Everything’s Broken

On a second trip to Kaliurang with Alex, we enjoy a brisk hike and see more monkeys. [Thankfully, the one with the Ball Trauma is nowhere to be found - one can only hope he got his problem stitched up OR that he found relief in Monkey Suicide.] Alex takes some time to feed the monkeys, tossing them small bits of fruit and –with a little patience- actually coaxes one to snatch a peanut out of his hand.

I originally meant to include a longer comment here about my aversion to feeding “wild” animals, how I feel like an intruder in nature, how mostly-paved “parks” like the one at Kaliurang fill me with guilt, how the idea of “connecting” more deeply with an animal in that context is preposterous, how we’ve ruined these monkeys and are ruining all animals, and so on. That took an ugly turn and concluded with something like “The idea that we can ‘save the planet’ is a joke. It’s too late.” and led into an even longer passage about how Indonesian culture is "crumbling", how "all cultures are crumbling", and so on. Sounds charming, I know! Probably best to keep it to that little synopsis.

Anyway, here’s us at the top of the hill:

It was bright. I’m told my expression here is “curmudgeonly”. To that I say SHUT THE HELL UP and of course GET OFF MY LAWN.

When I first arrived, people easily guessed I was American. With some preliminary beard growth, they began to guess I was from France. Later, it was Germany. Now, after a few months, someone tells me that when I spoke to his English class, everyone there was sure I must be Palestinian.

An annoying clerk at the bootleg DVD shop asks me: “Are you Muslim?”

Already annoyed, I curtly reply “No.”

He strokes an imaginary beard. “You look like… Hussein!”

I correct him: “Saddam Hussein had a mustache.”

Only later does it occur to me, “Oh yeah! When they finally pulled him out of that hole, Saddam Hussein did have a big beard!”

This is a hillside leading down to a stream in Bantul. These kinds of cascading mountains of garbage are everywhere. Most of the time they aren’t on fire. OK, maybe about half the time.

On that trip to Kaliurang, Alex and I stumble onto an unexpected show. After the hike but before the monkeys, we stumble onto a performance near the restaurants and shops at the foot of the hills. A band (a few gamelan players with a drumset and two gifted singers) is playing a frantic disco beat. Ogres dance around between opposing armies on “horseback”:

The ogres move off and warriors from either side spring forward to dance/battle in time with the music:

After the fourth duel, the dragon/horse thing charges wildly back into the performance area. Everyone “onstage” dances.

Suddenly everyone collapses. The men watching from the edges move in quickly and remove their costume armor and weapons. The ogres remove their masks and watch from the sidelines. The dragon/horse costume is removed, leaving the dudes inside sprawled on the ground like everyone else. They lay motionless, like corpses strewn across a battlefield:

The music picks up new intensity and the dancers slowly awaken and rise, stretching and testing out moves.

Soon they are all up and dancing wildly. All appear “out of it” but the guys who were inside the dragon/horse are clearly FUCKED UP. Someone puts neon green jackets on them - to make them easier to spot in the crowd? They flail about with their eyes closed or rolled back in their heads. One keeps falling down, rolling around, kicking and punching blindly. The sideline observers get him back on his feet, feed him a quick drink from one of the mysterious vials they're carrying, then shove him back into the fray. In time everyone is given a swig of the unknown substance.

The homoerotic dance party [or what would be a homoerotic dance party if Indonesians weren't so asexual] continues:

My camera’s battery dies just when things start to get weird. The sideline observers lay out a woven mat on the sand in font of the band. One of them makes intense eye contact with a dancer and assumes a sort of martial arts stance. He lures the dancer in by dancing a little with him, mirroring his movements. When the dancer is within a few paces of the mat, the observer yanks him forward using Powers. The dancer flips forward, lands on his back on the mat. Three men hold him down. Another man places his hand on the dancer’s stomach and brings it up to the dancer’s face, seemingly forcing the spirit from his body. The boy goes limp and must be carried offstage. This procedure is repeated on all the performers. When the last one has been cleansed [or emptied, or whatever] the shows ends and people disperse.

It's been over a month since the semester ended and I am still waiting to hear when Second Semester begins. I expect either a text message that says "Justin! Come to class tomorrow!" or one that says "Justin! Why didn't you come to class today?"

With dwindling funds and a lot of free time, a person in my position might strongly consider taking a job teaching Conversational English at a private school like Jogja English Dormitory. This would more than triple my income and would offer lots of fun stories. But since the terms of my Darmasiswa Scholarship preclude working while I'm here, it would be really silly to post such stories on the internet. So, you know, it's a good thing that I totally DON'T have a job now that has kept me really busy and will be interesting to juggle along with classes at ISI whenever those start. Yeah, that's the ticket...

Once again, my habit of lengthy edits and procrastination keeps me from giving real-time updates of new developments, specifically Dad's recent visit. The Indonesian leg of The Old Man's world tour [his delightful account is here, with regular updates] brings him to Jogja on Monday and he ends up staying with us the whole week before jetting off to Bali on Friday night.

I am extremely busy [you know, with stuff that's TOTALLY NOT a new job that I'm not really qualified for], but we manage to share some meals and take in a little of the "local flavor" (fried foods, exhaust fumes). And he cooks for us throughout the week, which is always welcome. I will attempt a more timely update when he passes back through in a few weeks.

Finally, as I noted elsewhere, I will be posting mixes of recent musical favorites here from time to time. This is the first one. Listen to it! It will roughly approximate an hour-long car ride with yours truly. More coming soon.

Fucked Up “No Epiphany” (Daytrotter)

John Zorn “Almadel”

Crime & The City Solution “All Must Be Love”

Miss Murgatroid & Petra Haden “Fade Away”

Björk “Naturra”

Kristin Hersh “Juno” (Daytrotter)

Caribou “Desiree”

The Microphones “The Pull + Ice” (April 27, 2003)

Tripping Daisy “Mechanical Breakdown”

Einstürzende Neubauten “Weil Weil Weil (Kurt Sweil Remix by Jochen Arbeit)”

The Qemists & Mike Patton “Lost Weekend”

Dälek “2012 (The Pillage)”

School Of Seven Bells “Conjjur”

Dragging An Ox Through Water “Not Harping On Powers”

Part Twelve

2009-01-15T04:46:00.000-08:00

See The World, Subjugate The Ocean

“Kids Learning English” Story #1

A friend of a friend is looking for a Native Speaker to judge an English Speech competition at UNY (Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta) in the first week in January and I enthusiastically volunteer. For the first round, the 12 competitors have prepared speeches about:

a) Whether the Indonesian government lowering the price of fuel was a good idea (All agree: YES!)

b) How Obama’s victory will affect Indonesia in the coming years (All agree: President Obama will be good for Indonesia! Because he used to live here!)

c) The Young Leader Phenomenon (Each one mentions Obama’s victory over McCain and makes a vague reference to how younger leaders know more about things like The Internet.)

Most of the speeches are mediocre and repetitive, with few coherent arguments coming across. Five finalists move on to the second -and final- round, in which they’re given 10 minutes to prepare a brief speech on “Israel’s Recent Aggression Toward Palestine”.

The frontrunner from the first round once again gives the best-pronounced, best-thought-out speech. However, her speech is barely 5 minutes long and before addressing the topic she takes a moment to define the word “Holocaust” and brings up discrepancies between different groups’ claims about how many people were killed in the Holocaust, plainly explaining that: “The Jew uses the Holocaust to get sympathy from the rest of the world…” [That’s right. ‘The Jews’ would have been special enough, but no. The Jew (singular). Like how Borat says it.]

However, her arguments and her English are by far the best of the group and she wins easily. To her credit, she goes on to acknowledge that the issue is a complicated one and that blame cannot be laid solely at the feet of… The Jew.

This is the nightmare tree with long human-sized fingers

for roots next to where we park our bikes.

“Kids Learning English” Story #2

The same acquaintance needs help a few days later, so I join Dora (Darmasiswa from Hungary) in administering a conversational English test at a school where Indonesian kids are trained to work on American and Dutch cruise ships.

The test covers basic introductions and personal information, then describing a few simple photographs. They’ve only been studying English for a few months, but some show remarkable progress. When asked why he wants to work on a cruise ship, one young man happily replies: “I wish to work on cruise ship so I can see many places and subjugate the ocean.”

“Ha ha ha," I say, "Uhh, are you sure that’s the word you want to use?”

He nods earnestly. “Yes, yes! Subjugate!”

“Kids Learning English” Story #3

When Jeannie goes on a school field trip, one of her [normally conservative] female tutors arrives wearing a t-shirt with this on it:

If there were any questions about how much English this tutor knows, this would answer them. Jeannie opts not to explain the meaning of the shirt to the tutor, to avoid an immensely awkward conversation and –I expect- hysterical outburst of shame from the girl.

[Australian] Carla and I have been practicing for weeks, putting together a set under the name Kilat Khusus (from an Indonesian postal service slogan alluding to their lightning speed, a reference I find particularly laughable since the package I’ve been expecting has taken more than a month to arrive). Some moments sound a little like Glass Candy or Suicide or The Deckers. Audio/video evidence of a possible show in late January will follow.

We’ll have to work quickly though since they just got word that Darmasiswa canceled the Short Course for Second Semester, so Carla, my friend Alexandros, his sister, and all the rest who were applying to extend their studies for the rest of the year are out of luck and will have to vacate the country soon. This is especially lame since the administrators here were telling them all along that extending their programs would be no problem. (Apparently it was 100% possible right up until the day it suddenly wasn’t.)

I recognize Pooh and Mickey, but which Copyrighted character

is that blue …thing on the right supposed to be?

“Kids Learning English” Story #4

Helping kids learn English is fun, so I agree to take Maya (Darmasiswa from Wisconsin)’s place speaking English at a local high school. This assignment turns out to mean accompanying a group of a couple hundred kids to a local herb plantation, then to a park at Kaliurang (near the foot of Mt. Merapi). It also means free lunch.

Seen from outside, Kaliurang is super cool; tall hills covered with jungle trees arouse the imagination. Unfortunately, upon entering one finds paved paths and state park-style structures everywhere. The group of students -which includes several contestants from the Speech Competition from the previous week- crowds around me to practice conversation and endure long, ranting answers to their questions about American culture.

My excitement at seeing “wild” monkeys for the first time fades quickly. The park monkeys are less wretched than the cats and dogs I’ve seen in town, though they are afflicted with the same hideously drooping Malnourishment Teats.

As one monkey scampers along about 20 feet away from me, my eyes catch a quick flash of red. I follow him to get better look and that’s when I see the Worst Thing I Will See In This Country. This poor monkey has sustained a terrible injury to the balls. His sac has been slashed or torn on the right side and movement pulls the wound apart, revealing a wedge of the bright red stuff inside.

After attempting to draw this horror at home with unsatisfactory results, I manage to recreate it using a pink t-shirt inside a plastic bag. From behind, this poor monkey’s pouch looked like this:

And yet, there in the park, somehow no one else seems to share my dismay. They can't NOT notice. How could ...THAT... be unremarkable? FOR GOD'S SAKE, SOMEBODY RENDER SOME ASSISTANCE!

But they don't. The injured monkey disappears, the field trip concludes without further incident, and they give me some nice batik for my trouble. The End.

Part Eleven

2009-01-06T20:01:00.000-08:00

Crappy Holidays! (ZIIIINGGGG!!!)

Christmas Eve 2008! Unprecedented snow? Familial warmth? Delicious prime rib, pies, and whatnot? Sadly, no. In Jogja it was last-minute gamelan rehearsal that forced me to postpone beach travel plans until Christmas Day.

The rehearsal is held in a dusty shack full of gamelan instruments somewhere in backwoods Bantul. My classmates and I practice a new song for about an hour as members of our teacher’s gamelan group trickle in. Once the whole group arrives, Amateur Hour comes to an end and they get down to the real business of the night - running all the music for the next show. Here’s a taste (Note: the video's a little dark):

Things conclude at around midnight and we [Yuri –from Japan, the other non-Indonesian in class- and I] are told to report to campus in the morning to get new text for the show on the 29^th, when we will be “opening” for Pak Udrek.

I get up and go to school at 10 o’clock on Christmas morning without protest [since, really, what else do I have to do?] and find the wayang building locked. I wait around until 11:00 when Yuri shows up to tell me that Mas Udreko is still typing up the text, he’ll be here at noon and can I wait there til then? Uhhh, NO. I have to catch a bus to Pacitan. I’ll get it in a couple of days. Bye!

Actually boarding a bus to Pacitan turns out to be more difficult than expected. Jeannie and I barely make it to the bus station by our scheduled departure time and everyone there is aggressively unhelpful. We’re pointed in all different directions, usually by dudes hoping to hustle us onto their own buses. All insist there is no direct bus from Jogjakarta to Pacitan, despite the fact that our friends Alex and Paula took that bus on the previous day. Suspicious but tired of waiting, we end up getting a bus to Solo [around 2 hours] then transferring to a bus to Pacitan [almost 3 hours].

In Solo we eat Christmas Dinner: sate ayam and water at the bus station, choked by the fumes of a dozen shabby buses. It is at this point that I realize that I will never have to worry about having a worse Christmas than this one. Maybe there’s some long-term satisfaction in that. In the short term, though, it just sucks.

Real hat, real chair, cardboard girl. From a distance = alarming!

Exhausted and smelly, we arrive in Pacitan after 9 PM. Having spent the entire day rushing around or crammed into bus seats designed for a people whose average height is 6-12 inches less than ours, we manage to chat with Alex and Paula for a bit [and ascertain what a nice, relaxing Christmas Day they had, those jerks], and we all retire to our small, hot, mosquito-friendly room.

We spend most of the next day (December 26^th) at the beach. As a town Pacitan is unremarkable, but the beach is nicer than Krakal. The sand is softer, the water is cleaner, and there is ample area for swimming. We play in the waves, eat tasty watermelon, and escape with manageable sunburns.

Alexandros goes in for the close-up.

Later we venture out for food and I finally get to try roti bakar. For the uninitiated:

-Roti Bakar begins with a loaf of bread.

-The loaf is sliced lengthwise three times, until it looks like a tall book with four thick pages.

-Each “page” is painted with butter.

-Chocolate sprinkles are poured over the butter.

-Condensed milk is drizzled onto the chocolate.

-Then they fold the thing up, smear butter all over the outside, and grill it.

The result is like a chocolate sandwich between wedges of French toast. I have heard it aptly described as “apocalyptic”. [Note: In Jogja, Roti Bakar is sold alongside local Fresh Milk stands. More on that when I experience it.]

After more confusion and misinformation at the bus station, I get the bus from Pacitan to Batu [2 hours] and the bus from Batu to Jogja [3 hours]. The Batu-Jogja bus is particularly crowded, as they seem to stop at every wide part of the road to take more villagers on.

Several times I think I detect the smell of shit. It passes so quickly, I assume it was my imagination. Not so! Apparently that’s an intended use for the plastic bags dispensed from the ceiling of the bus. The kid in front of me hands a bagged-up package to his mom (who is standing in the aisle, hovering over him) and she dutifully flings it out the window.

[photo coming soon]

December 29^th is my first wayang performance in front of an audience. While the shows I’ve attended so far have been remote village affairs, this one is in an open-air building on a [relatively] well-trafficked Bantul street. Before the show, they take me to the epic wardrobe at Pak Udrek’s house where all the group's traditional dress is kept. It takes two of them to assemble the dhalang outfit: a fancily wrapped batik sarong thing, tightly wrapped and pinned sashes and belt, flowery shirt, and kris (plus another 20 minutes of rooting through the many hats to find one that I can squeeze onto the huge melon on top of my neck).

[photo coming soon]

The performance goes well. The next few days are quiet, New Year's Eve is mellow, it isn't until the following week that they mention that the show on the 29th was NOT my exam, that in fact my exam performance will be on January 5th. We meet on the 4th to dismantle Pak Udrek's wayang screen, cut down some banana trees (puppets stick into banana logs just below the screen), load it all into a truck, and spend the rest of the day setting it all up in the place we practiced on Christmas Eve.

The second performance is better than the first. Even though I'm still in the dark on the exact meaning of most of the script I must still read phonetically, the jokes get laughs and my singing elicits fewer jeers than at least one of my fellow students'. Considering these circumstances, not being The Worst in some respect feels like a major victory.

Next: Judging English speeches, finding a job, and adding YouTube videos to old entries...

Unrelated

2008-12-28T15:58:00.000-08:00

Every website and magazine has trotted out its own Best Of 2008 list and –as usual- the “mainstream indie” squares all cite the same handful of titles (each in a slightly different order) and ignore a ton of exciting new music most people probably missed during the year. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise by now, but it’s still annoying. I’d like to point out/remind folks about some of my personal favorites from the past year that major publications seem to have overlooked:

Zach Hill Astrological Straits

Dense with nonstop fills and twists, this album combines jaw-dropping playing, complex compositions, fierce experimentation, and bursts of fun into something both catchy and overwhelming. [Les Claypool’s guest appearance here is a welcome development as well. It’s good to hear him lending his talents to something edgier than his recent output of boring jams.]

Thee Oh Sees The Master's Bedroom is Worth Spending a Night In

This saw moderate praise from critics, it was somehow NOT embraced as the most infectious (and timeless?) album of the year. The songs bounce along with a giddy garage vibe and sweet harmonies. AND it’s the first Oh Sees record to approach the jumpy energy of their live show. I love it. Pound for pound, this was my favorite release of the year.

Secret Chiefs 3 Xaphan: Book Of Angels, Vol. 9

Trey Spruance, Eyvind Kang, and the rest apply their methods to John Zorn’s Masada tunes. While Zorn’s hand dominates the other volumes in the Book Of Angels series, this is a Secret Chiefs record first. That means the usual cinematic flourishes, Eastern spice, interestingly layered arrangements, and of course impeccable playing. This was the album I was most looking forward to this year (in part because it was repeatedly delayed) and it did not disappoint.

While we’re on the subject! If you’re at all interested in the history of Mr. Bungle, Faith No More, and SC3, I’d highly recommend this recent interview with Trey Spruance. In it he says one of my new favorite things:

"Work only happens to an artist because he loves what-has-not-yet-come-into-being-through-him, and he loves it more than he loves anything else besides God while he works; he works not because he wants to get a genius cookie at the end of the day. Nor is his work a "chore", like rowing a boat to get him to some temporary sense of self-satisfaction at the shoreline, once he is "finished"... the work itself (not the object, just the work) has to be divine artifice; otherwise you really do find yourself reveling in human excrement (like Metallica)."

The Melvins’ Nude With Boots was a great rock record and getting to witness the Dale Crover/Coady Willis two-drummer onslaught in July was one of the best concert experiences I had all year. But for potent ROCK, nothing released this year comes close to the greasy, hairy, spilled-beer crotch kicks on Harvey Milk’s "Life... The Best Game In Town". Every single person I played this for burst into delighted laughter at the same point I still do, when the opening song’s subdued falsetto lines about Christmastime give way to the sudden roar: “WHEN I THINK OF ALL THE LITTLE MOMENTS IN MY LIFE I HAVE DESPISED…!” From there on it’s loud, unhurried, eminently confident, and glorious. This record just ROCKS.

Dragging An Ox Through Water The Tropics Of Phenomenon

Brian did it again. That he’s starting to receive the same glowing attention outside of Portland city limits as he does inside them shouldn’t surprise anyone. Tropics Of Phenomenon stretches further in every direction he reached on Rebukes (and before). The pretty songs are sweeter, the noise breaks are longer and noisier, and the lyrics I’d already memorized from countless shows over the past few years are all newly devastating.

Arrington De Dionyso All Is On, All Is One

This set of free-form ragas for solo bass clarinet /voice is surprisingly focused as Arrington solo albums go. For maximum benefits, I recommend listening to the whole thing in one sitting. If you can make it all the way through, you will have reached the desired trance state by the time the drums finally kick in midway through the last song. And when they do…! As far as I know, this -like much of his new catalog- is only available at shows, packaged in original artwork.

Mugison Mugiboogie

Here Mugison shed the solo-genius vibe that originally drew me to him. [Three years ago, Mugimama, Is This Monkey Music seemed like it was made specifically for me.] But with the more conventional full-band arrangements he manages to reach some admirable ‘straightforward rock’ heights with satisfying dashes of weirdness.

Atlas Sound How I Escaped the Prison of Fractals

Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel got all the attention, but I listened to and enjoyed this EP much more. It's a more concise serving of dreamy, layered, lo-fi pop songs AND it was released for free through Bradford Cox’s blog.

Another rundown of under-appreciated picks from 2008 will follow when I receive Chris' package containing the long list of things it was impossible to download/investigate properly here, Indonesian internet resources being what they are. So stay tuned for that.

Next time, updates will include: Christmas, Exams, and more...!!!

Part Ten

2008-12-23T23:31:00.000-08:00

In Which I See A Puppet Show And Behave Like A Ninny Around Dead Things

The rat lay on its side, kitten-sized and still, with a fly licking at its open black eye, just inside the front gate of the house. [A gift from one of the neighborhood's many ugly cats, no doubt.] It was too big and the path was too narrow... leaving the house would mean either moving this thing -I doubled over and made an exaggerated wretching sound at the thought- or stepping over it. (And give the fly a chance to shoot up my pant leg and introduce whatever disease-y bounties he's just sucked off of ratus mortus' eyeball to my nether parts? I think not.)

I knew it would have to be moved. Still, I paced back and forth for a while, laughing nervously in between long, womanish moans. Rats and dead things out in the world are A Fact and I've certainly seen my share since coming here. Call me old-fashioned, but rats at home is still really not OK with me.

I searched the house and soon found an appropriate tool: an old pink mop handle in the kitchen closet. Upon returning to the front porch I experience a brief pang of disappointment that the thing hadn't magically disappeared during the minute I was away. After another brief psyche-up [in which I reminded myself that this sort of business is my job since I am quite literally the Man Of The House] I was ready to approach the... obstacle.

With the mop handle held out as far from my body as possible, I poked gingerly at the rat. Its body was already completely stiff and it rocked onto its side like it was made of papier-mache. With this confirmation that the thing was not squishy or somehow still alive, I drew the mop handle back like a pathetic pink hockey stick and swung, knocking the rat about 18 inches to the right.

Just far enough! Plenty of room! Mission accomplished!

I found an out-of-the-way place near the porch for the mop handle (No no, I don’t think we’ll be having that item back in the house. Burn it! Send it to Hell!) and continued on my way to school. Upon returning home that afternoon I found the rat was gone. We later deduced that Bibi (the landlady’s housekeeper next door who tidies up out front and waters the plants) had probably dealt with it properly.

That evening –as is her custom from time to time- Bibi brought over some treats for us. Cooked bananas and these little tubes of rice wrapped in banana leaves with a ground meat center. No one was crass enough to suggest that the meat filling might have been rodent-based, but the question did come up as we sat munching on the treats: “Do you think Bibi picked the rat up with her bare hands?”

The following photos are from the most recent Paper Moon [local puppet company featuring Carla From Mexico as puppeteer and Carla From Australia as music supervisor] production, (A Short Journey). Colorful strangers meet on a train…

When everyone falls asleep, the Skeleton (a life-sized version of the Horny Skeleton from their previous show) steals some stuff and runs away. When they wake and find their things are gone, the Beggar character (Carla) reveals her Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass and begins to investigate the crime. They eventually catch the Skeleton, he returns their belongings, and Yolanda –the woman in yellow- gives birth:

When we first see Yolanda in her house she is admiring a photo of her sweetheart, the cop on horseback. He re-appears just as she gives birth (on the floor of a train station?).

Note the photos of the birth scene: Yolanda gives birth to a fetus seated atop a slimy little fetus horse. The kids in the audience seem oblivious to the troubling questions this raises about dual paternity.

Meanwhile, Christmas is now just days away. Average temperatures here are still in the 80s and things don’t feel the way they should at the end of a year. Maybe having seasons to help mark the passage of time is more important than I had thought… If Summer 2008 continues for another seven months like some hellish tropical time warp, I will be sweaty and annoyed. As it is, I’m nearly finished with the project that was supposed to be a late gift from Christmas 2007. [Sorry again, folks! I’ll make sure it’s ‘worth it’, I swear!]

Part Nine

2008-12-11T17:46:00.000-08:00

Kethoprakin' In The Third World

On Sunday [Was that two Sundays ago? Three? Four??] I send a text message to my classmate Haryonto, asking about the Sunday practice session at Mas Aning [our teacher]’s house. He replies quickly, telling me to meet him on campus ASAP. I do! I arrive in such a hurry that as I speed through a puddle on the road to ISI my bike strikes a bump in the concrete and suddenly becomes extremely difficult to pedal. [In the morning I will examine it and find that while the pedals, gears, chain, and wheels are fully intact, the part of the frame running from the pedals up to the seat has snapped apart. Like a pretzel stick.]

Anyway, I meet Hari, Danang, and some others. We ride motorbikes into the leafy depths of Bantul [the village to the south where I saw the all-night wayang show mentioned here before]. We reach our destination and there are lots of people there. Too many people. No Mas Aning. And a full stage setup.

“Hari”, I say as politely as I can, “Is this the practice? This looks kind of like a show.” His eyes get big and he begins apologizing. Apparently he’s been having girl troubles! He forgot to tell me we were NOT in fact going to a practice session, but were instead going to another all-night show. Whoops-a-daisy!

Since I missed his wayang orang show, I had promised Danang I would see his kethoprak [stilted Javanese theatre] show the following Tuesday. We arrived late after some confusion about the venue (we rode all the way to Rumah Budaya Teman only to learn that the show was happening at Taman Budaya! Classic comedy, that!) we made it in time for the show.

Most of the show involves actors sitting on stools on either side of the stage, having long discussions in Javanese. [Booooooor-rinnnggggg!] However, the battles are pretty cool. And at the end they stab the wicked king in the gut and he fights and snarls right up until the moment he dies. Good stuff.

After the scene shown above (where arrows come flying across the stage from both sides), these archers retreat and the enemy general enters from the right, angrily taunting them. After a few moments, there’s a sharp noise a giant silver arrow flies along a line of monofilament, hitting him directly in the chest.

Once he dies, these women file in on either side of his corpse:

He stands dazedly and they all exit together. With the women and the trailing fabric like a river, it's a really elegant way to usher a character offstage, into the afterlife. Other than that, though, the show was pretty lame.

FINALLY! After some delays and uncertainty, Jeannie, Carla, Carla, and I all get moved into the new house. We agree: it's the nicest (or at least the biggest) house we're likely to live in ever again.

Midway through my moving process [I got it all in five quick bicycle trips!] I finally get a chance to talk to my landlady about how much of the year's-worth of rent I paid for my old place I might expect to get back. As it turns out, that amount will be something in the neighborhood of NOTHING. Because she ALREADY SPENT IT and refunding any of that money "doesn’t fit into her monthly budget."

This is disappointing to say the least, but not a total lost cause. I might see some of that 5 million Rupiah (<$500) again when I am able to find a sub-letter. As of this point, no takers yet.

In a hilarious follow-up to the discussion about responsible money management: I found the most incredible amplifier for Rp. 150,000 (<$15). Its clean tone is horrendously distorted, with weird octave effects. The distorted tone = even MORE. [The ensuing racket is often recognizable as a sound a guitar would/could [never 'should'] make. The message scribbled across the front is an apt one:

To describe the sound of this thing another way, it sounds the way this dead rat looks:

[I was compelled to take this photo a couple months ago, on the street where I now live. FYI: Rats are the #1 roadkill I've seen in Jogja (followed by frogs, then snakes at a distant third), but they're ordinarily found as flattened and sun-baked rectangles of fur. The freshness and sheer volume of materials -at least two rats, by my estimation- were remarkable.]

Anyway, the amp is exactly like that. Two rats' worth of guts splattered across the pavement of your ear. I love it.

Speaking of dead rats! On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have this charming fellow:

More about him soon!

Part Eight

2008-11-14T22:13:00.000-08:00

An Eventful Week
First, the obvious: Everyone here is thrilled about the election. When they learn I am American, people now smile big and exclaim "Obama!" Cautious hope abounds.

The feeling that every aspect of “real life” that could conceivably get worse IS getting worse and we have only dim hopes of slowing this (but no hope of reversing it) is something I've taken for granted for a long time. This cautious ‘hope for the future’ business is such an alien feeling... I guess we'll see how things go.

On Friday, fellow Darmasiswa-ers Carla From Australia and Carla From Mexico (and some others) put on a Day Of The Dead-themed puppet show, combining wayang and bunraku(?) styles. It’s entertaining and it reaffirms everything I know about Mexican culture. [The debauched skeleton’s dialogue is limited to: “Tequila!! Tortilla?!! Senorita!!”]

Before the show I learn that the aforementioned Two Carlas and Jeannie from Seattle need a fourth roommate for the mansion they’re moving into. By popular demand, the fourth roommate will be yours truly. We move in later this week! New video tour coming soon.

The next day, a group of us rides to Krakal Beach. It’s about 2 hours’ drive from Jogja, over hills and through villages. While the terrain is nothing like Oregon, the rainy beach drive under gray skies through lush greenery is delightfully familiar. It rains too hard to get any footage of the coolest part of the drive (passing through hills with huge expanses of steppe farms on both sides), but this video should give you a rough idea of how it went.

When we arrive at Krakal, I swim in the ocean for the first time. Gray skies and warm, inviting water… delicious nasi goreng at a beachside warung… one big, affordable room near the beach for the nine of us... Even though Krakal is supposed to be pretty lame as Indonesian beaches go, it is one of the most pleasing places I’ve ever been. Regarding the appeal of tropical beaches: now I get it!

We swim again the next morning before heading home. We all get big, annoying sunburns.

I’ve been slowly working my way through H.P. Lovecraft’s The Thing On The Doorstep And Other Weird Stories for the better part of a year. Most of it is solid, but the unfortunate lack of Cthulhu mythos has kept me from really sinking my teeth into it. Until now, when I discover The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward, The Dunwich Horror, and At The Mountains Of Madness back to back at the end of the collection, all superb entries in the Cthulhu canon.

Much of my time reading these stories is spent at a streetside sate ayam (chicken sate) cart. As a result, I've come to automatically associate them with bowlfuls of delicious brown glop and the combined smells of fire, chicken cooking, peanut-y sauce, and exhaust from passing motorcycles. In general these tropical surroundings have been wholly inappropriate for reading HLP, but that blend of odors is right on the money.

Speaking of inappropriate for the climate, I've been listening to Crime And The City Solution’s Room Of Lights a lot. Mick Harvey’s presence accounts for a lot of the mood (mid-to-late-Eighties Bad Seeds, AKA my favorite Bad Seeds era) but drearier, more thuggish and blunt. Strongly Recommended!

Part Seven

2008-10-28T02:30:00.000-07:00

Safety First

Slipping and falling halfway down the wet stairs to my room goes better than I would have expected. No injuries, just a nasty scare. [My feeling as it happened was something close to: “Could this be the end of Milhouse?”] Barely a minute later, a hellish racket starts up downstairs. My landlady has summoned a generic workman from out of nowhere to chisel traction divots into each of the concrete stairs. Problem “solved”. (…?!)

When I get to class on Thursday, my friend Danang [yes, that makes him Danang The Dalang] waves me over, hoping I can settle the discussion they are having about English slang. He says: “Justin! What is a… bulonda?”

“‘Bulonda’? Saya tidak mengerti, tidak tahu ‘bulonda’.” (I don’t understand, don’t know ‘bulonda’.)

He hands me his phone, which shows a list of links or web search results (not sure which). The highlighted line reads: Blonde prepares for anal.

“Ohhhh, blonde! That just means someone has blonde-colored hair. Light, you know, like yellow hair.”

“OK”, he says. After a moment he favors me with a conspiratorial grin. “And… ah-nall…?”

Studies are progressing reasonably well. On days when I have classes (or when I can see a local performance) I enjoy a real clarity of purpose for what I’m doing here. The more I learn, the more possibilities I see for wayang elements that would make sense in what I do. Gamelan and karawitan (singing in Javanese, part of dalang performance) are both challenging and rewarding, also full of possibilities. Days I don’t have classes, I tend to wake up and stare at a wall, wondering: “Why did I come here again?" This feeling usually passes when it is replaced by more immediate matters. For instance: "Right now I'm hungry!"

Anyway, this is a video I made while riding around the city on one of those off days.

On a long walk through an unfamiliar neighborhood after a concert, I spy what appears to be a tomahawk fashioned from a jagged shard of glass strapped to a broken-off broom handle, affixes to a lamppost. My mind races: this crude weapon is clearly displayed as a warning to outsiders of which gang presides over the area. Expecting a group of thugs brandishing similar homemade cutters and bashers to jump out at any moment, my natural reaction is to stumble backwards and utter a low, horrified cry -much to my friend Jeannie's amusement.

On closer inspection the wedge-shaped “glass” blade turns out to be a discarded plastic juice bag (with the straw still sticking out of it) hung from the telephone pole that catches the light in an alarming way. It's a relief that we were not savaged by a pack of Mad Max-style brutes, but now there is some concern about whether I am insane.

On my landlady’s recommendation, I attend a modern dance performance at Taman Budaya. An Indonesian dance company has collaborated with a Japanese dance company to commemorate 50 years of friendship between cultures, the theme of their collaborative dance performance is the passage of time or the beauty of life or some other bullshit.

The first part is OK, with lots of impressive feats of strength and flexibility and what I think were supposed to be metaphors. Things take a turn for the surreal during the finale, when a curtain lowers in reverse (is there a technical name for that?) to reveal a giant flower floating above the stage. The dancers wave their arms and gyrate in reverence to The Flower. A bent old man hobbles across the stage behind them. The curtain lowers further to reveal an extravagant drumset:

A man in a toga enters and begins a long drum solo over the preprogrammed beats. The old man hobbles across the stage again. The dancers work themselves into a climactic frenzy. Rose petals pour down from above. The End. The show is a bit indulgent but it has its moments; altogether not bad for a two-dollar show. My interest in Modern Dance is officially upgraded from "Not At All" to "Maybe, If It's Really, Really Cheap".

Part Six

2008-10-17T01:25:00.000-07:00

Wayang Mania

After class on Tuesday one of my wayang teachers invites us to a performance in his village. Since it is a weeknight, I quietly assume it will be a relatively short exhibition (maybe 2 hours?) like the ones I’ve seen at the museum on Fridays. And so it is that I show up completely unprepared for the awesomeness of an all-night wayang kulit show.

We meet at the teacher’s house, on a country road about half an hour outside of town. In place of a garage he has an open-walled building with a full wayang screen setup inside, for practice or small performances. We pile into his truck and he drives us further out, to the village where the real stage is set up and people are starting to gather. We eat with him and some of the other performers "backstage" and then take our positions to the left of the screen.

The show lasts from around 8:00 PM until roughly 4:00 AM. It's a grueling eight hours, but despite still not understanding any Javanese, the performance is incredible and and I am able to stay awake the whole time.

I take many pictures. These are some good ones:

One of the sequences toward the end of the show involves a maurauding giant and the hero's noble efforts to thwart him. The hero fires off a magic arrow [Note: themes that keep coming up in these stories: flight, giants, and magic arrows.] that bounces off the giant, no effect. A clown character (the tall one with the goofy pony tail, on the far right below) produces an unmistakably phallic fish which he throws at the giant. The fish/cock flops through the air along the same path the arrow flew. It buries itself in the giant's side, he is killed instantly. The fish/cock has fucked him to death. Here is the aftermath:

One aspect of the show I found particularly inspiring: Between the dalang, the singers, and the gamelan players, there are about thirty people onstage. A handful of others prepare food, set up/tear down the stage, run sound, etc. But at its largest, the audience never outnumbered the people working to put the show on. By the end, less than ten were left (including the wayang students).

One of the most exciting parts of classes has been the teachers' genuine love of wayang. More than anything else, they just have the best time in the world making it and their enthusiasm is contagious. This performance reinforces that feeling; although it might have be modestly attended and no one here is paid much (if anything), it is still clearly considered a successful show. For the performers, that other stuff is secondary to the show itself. [As it should be! Artistic integrity as a matter of course? Sold!!]

On Thursday night we see my other wayang kulit teacher in a wayang orang performance. [Note: Wayang kulit is the play with leather puppets illuminated against a screen. Wayang orang is the play with human actors. Same stories, same music, but with colorful costumes and the performance lasts about half as long.]

This is the open-air hall where the performance takes place:

There is a recurring joke involving this leering demon king's attempts to copulate with the beams:

The climax of an extended fight sequence between a graceful warrior princess and this pack of (apes? demons? giants?) comes when she climbs/leaps in slow motion up above them...

...and then drives a slow-motion punch down into the middle of them, the force of which knocks them away in all directions. [Wasn't that a Street Fighter move?]

Finally, we saw an Indonesian film called Barbi3:

As the trailer indicates, it's standard teen comedy drek, unremarkable except for the fact that 1) The characters in the movie attend President University, which I found hilarious, and 2) the sequence with the old man in the robes was terrifying on the big screen.

Part Five

2008-10-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

Hands Are For Shaking

On the afternoon of October 7^thit finally rains. The days that follow are as hot and dry as any since I arrived, but for a few glorious hours we get some relief from this "tropical weather" baloney.

The rain coincides with my landlady’s son Dali’s wedding day. She is the head of the neighborhood, so this is sort of a big deal for everyone here. Canopies are erected, chairs are brought out, and the dusty courtyard is quickly transformed into a decent reception area. The blonde New Zealander bride in full Javanese wedding garb (complete with black zig-zag hairline makeup) is particularly memorable. Sadly, my camera is unavailable to capture this.

After the ceremony, the young people blast reggae and someone’s uncle produces plastic bottles of local whiskey. It tastes like a lukewarm “whiskey and coke” that was mixed two or three days ago. (In other words, not particularly good.) There must be something compelling about the stuff since, at Susi’s older son Joko’s urging, I put back plenty of it. Joko tells me about the orangutans near his home in Sumatra and I pledge to visit him there while I am more or less "in the neighborhood".

More weirdness on restaurant television: I recognize the background music used during the soccer wrap-up on a rebroadcast of British sports coverage as Soundgarden’s “Fell On Black Days”.

October 10^th: Since Ramadan puts “the kibosh” on live music performances, my first opportunity to see live music in the familiar bar context comes in the form of an affable Indonesian reggae-pop band at Café Bintang (naturally featuring Bintang, the cheapest available Indonesian beer, AKA My Favorite Indonesian Beer):

They're pretty good. Returning home by bike, my enjoyment of night breezes and a Circle K ice cream cone is interrupted periodically by the smell of burning filth.

The Indonesian attitude toward trash is… different. I’m told taxes that would normally fund proper sanitation services instead go toward lining local fat-cats’ pockets. Without serious garbage collection*, garbage cans don’t make sense so garbage is stored in tiny wastebaskets. When the wastebasket is full, they either a) place the contents in a plain metal tub –as is the habit in my house- to be burned in the yard later, b) dump the trash out in a pile on the street and burn it there, c) dump the trash into one of the metal street-side trash crematorium, or d) just toss it wherever, for someone else to deal with.

*I do see garbage trucks from time to time. They're always overflowing and they're always stopped next to a neighborhood trash heap. In these moments they don't seem to be collecting the trash as much as exchanging possibly-edible food matter with feral trash-combers.

Garbage matters are further complicated by the amount of plastic this country uses. Every single purchase, no matter how small, is automatically placed into a plastic bag. Fresh-squeezed juice is packaged “to go” most popularly in a plastic bag with a straw sticking out of it. If not, it’s poured into a plastic cup that is then wrapped in a plastic bag.

[I have wondered if maybe plastic use is seen as some backwards badge of modernity, like “There might be dirt everywhere and the tap water might you horribly sick, but we have all the plastic you could want! See? We’re ‘with it’!” On second thought, they probably just don't think about it that hard.]

That reminds me:

On one of my first nights in Jogja, I bought a roll of square hard candy, roughly the size and shape of old Jolly Ranchers. I tried one and found the texture to be really odd. It had a smooth, waxy surface and a vague fruit flavor that became more pronounced once I worked through the outside layer. Inside, it was crunchy like normal hard candy. I was starting to wonder about the purpose of the weird outer layer when I realized that each candy was packaged individually and I had just eaten the first one with its clear plastic wrapper.

Lastly, this is what my ride to school looks like in fast-motion, set to Animal Collective.

Part Four

2008-10-06T20:05:00.000-07:00

Those Aren’t Tentacles; They’re Gentacles

It takes weeks for me to come to grips with a simple fact: If, from time to time, I need my fix of American-style pizza here, it means setting foot inside a Pizza Hut. After thirty-two days I humble myself enough to attempt it and the small pan-crust pepperoni I receive is exquisite.

Of course, paying an unheard-of 55,000 Rupiah for one meal [just under $6 American] leaves me feeling violated. But as a monthly indulgence, when I’m jonesing hard, it's acceptable. For mental health purposes.

And as a reminder of American portions! Indonesian cuisine has generally agreed with me, but nothing here approaches the good old-fashioned American caloric payload.

Ramadan turns out to be much less inconvenient than I had been led to believe. While most folks abstain from eating food during daylight hours, they have no problem preparing and selling it to us godless foreign devils.

The days following Ramadan, however, get a little hairy. Most businesses close their doors for almost a week. This includes the eateries I’ve come to rely on heavily and all available laundry facilities. [ Naturally this coincides with the end of my laundry cycle.] After exhausting the last of my clean clothes I awkwardly attempt to hand-wash some... these items emerge covered in each other’s dirt and a new, decidedly unappealing odor. So that’s a skill I might need to work on...

The ceremonial parade on October 2^ndlooks like this:

File under: “Oh, Asia…!” When I finally seek out some suntan lotion, it takes me a while before I can find UV protection that doesn’t promote its powerful whitening properties.

I acquired it before I came here, but with a week of downtime from school, etc. I finally get a chance to listen closely to the Retribution Gospel Choir album. It’s great!

On a similar note... I re-read Dune for the first time in about a decade during my trip to Chicago last year. My memory of things had become clouded by the Lynch film version* and I was blown away all over again by... well, everything I had forgotten that makes it great, especially forgotten how sad it is. The characters' dour formality and introspection makes the kid-pleasing schlock of another outer-space saga like Star Wars seem hollow and limp in comparison.

I was fortunate enough to find a copy of Dune Messiah in a local Money Changer/book shop here and was similarly impressed. It's an old copy, featuring this hilariously inappropriate jacket illustration:

I never really considered it before, but now Paul’s primary agenda –reconfiguring the ecology of Arrakis- seems like a utter folly based on off-worlder arrogance. Can reshaping the planet to make it less difficult to live on do anything other than ruin it (and the Fremen), by robbing them of vital parts of what they are? This and other shortsighted, selfish plans carried out on an epic sci-fi scale seem all the more tragic now.
Anyway, I really enjoyed it.

While eating dinner one night, I catch part of something called Malaikat Kecil Dari Surga (translation: Little Angels From Heaven) on television. Like most shows I’ve seen here, it's some kind of overwrought soap opera. In this case, though, the action centers on children. The children in the MKDS world hold all the power, either through manipulation, Village Of The Damned-style psychic menacing, or because they are literally angels from heaven as the title suggests. The source of their influence is unclear, but adults seem to obey them and heed their advice. This is what I see:

A woman stares off into the distance, crying. She stands in a sunny garden. Her despondent internal monologue is delivered via voice-over. A pudgy little brat in a backpack stomps into the garden and begins shouting at her. It appears that it is time for her to take him to school? She jumps to attention as soon as the kid starts berating her. He seems to be giving her direct orders. They leave together.

Two little girls in pigtails are having a strangely serious discussion in an elementary school hallway. Adults pass in and out of the background, but the camera angle cuts off their upper torso, like the teacher in Peanuts. With their business concluded, the girls go separate ways. The brat with the backpack enters.

Three boys (including the porker from before) are riding in the back of an SUV, evidently getting a ride home from school. A boy and girl (brother and sister?) are walking home along the side of the road. At the boys’ insistence, their quiet mustachioed chauffeur drives close to the edge of the road through a conveniently placed puddle, splashing water onto the walking kids.

The boys then bid the driver to stop, that they might properly taunt the kids they just soaked. As they do, the girl and the brat from the beginning recognize one another. Their eyes lock. Was she his “girlfriend”? The girl looks betrayed. The boy stammers, realizing his mistake. The boys give the sign to go, but the SUV pulls away too quickly, swerves to miss an oncoming car, and crashes into a tree. The crash is punctuated with a primitive computer-generated flame that flares up once from above the hood of the car.

COMMERCIAL BREAK.

The wet kids stare at the wreck, considering whether to help. They jump into action, pulling each of the passengers –all of whom are now unconscious, but otherwise unhurt- from the car. Except for the brat from the beginning! He’s out cold, trapped under a spare tire. Lines of blood run from his nose and mouth. A beautiful young woman appears and starts helping the wet kids move the crash victims. But they are laying them out in a row, parallel to one another, on the pavement. Were they all killed in the crash?!!

…and then the owner changes the channel. The point is: If there is more bizarre programming like this, I might need to start watching TV.

Part Three

2008-09-29T21:19:00.000-07:00

The Smarter Way To Internet

Conventional wisdom learned from television and films since childhood tells me that a rooster crows once a day, some time around sunrise. As it happens, several roosters will crow back and forth to one another from opposite sides of the neighborhood every 10-20 seconds from about 4 AM until… I don’t know, 6 PM?
Sometimes yowling cats and ill-mannered children join in the fun!

I’m developing a regular routine involving the neighborhood bakery in the morning, classes, Internet time on campus [when their wireless network is functioning] or another "hotspot", followed by copious napping, reading, writing, eating, exercise and –most shocking of all- voluntarily studying Indonesian.

I bought a bike -one of the generic black Dutch models favored by the locals- which has simplified getting around. It's slow and it makes noises like crushing pop cans when I go over bumps or pedal too fast. For almost $50 American, I'm told that I got royally ripped off. Oops!

Riding in this city is… different. But fun. Motorcycles, bicycles, and cars move fluidly, like fish. No, that’s not quite right; fish are more organized. You drive on the left here, except of course for the times when you’re pretty sure you can get away with driving on the right, then you do that. In fact, “I’m pretty sure I can get away with…” covers doing basically anything you want. The primary rules of the road seem to be:

Don’t hit the guy in front of you.
Assume that the guy behind you is following Rule #1.
OK, now get there however you want to. …Fast!

For my own purposes, I add a fourth rule: “Don’t die.” I believed it before, but this trip has renewed my faith in the superiority of Oregon in all things. I’d be extremely disappointed to die anywhere else. Of course, the copious fumes we’re all forced to suck down most likely negate any possible health benefits of riding everywhere. If that creates 'problems', I might reevaluate my transportation strategy... ["I ordered Zima, not emphysema.”]

Speaking of death! Here are some chickens in a graveyard. With so many chickens running around, I guess it’s bound to happen. Still, it seems... disrespectful?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The most basic local restaurant* involves a series of plates dishes displayed in a window at the front. Inside, you help yourself to rice from a large pot and to any of the items in the window. [Whole, fried fish are quite popular, but I tend to stay away from those. As a rule, I'm uncomfortable eating meat with its face still attached.] Once you have finished eating, the proprietor does a mental tally and decides on the amount that you owe. This seems to vary depending on the day and the staff's apparent mood, but a plate full of tasty food and iced tea usually runs you somewhere around 50 cents.

*Excluding the many, many carts. We've been cautioned against some of the fully mobile juice peddlers because of rumors that they cut the juice with the local water; a serious no-no. With this in mind, I try to avoid eating establishments without roofs.

Of course, my efforts to sample the local cuisine include these curious snack foods available in Jogjakarta’s finer convenience stores:

Important note: The chicken-flavored Chitatos taste surprisingly like dark-meat chicken. Also, Indonesian Cheetos aren’t cheesy. They’re yellow and dry, with a breakfast cereal ‘corn’ flavor. And while the American Chester Cheetah is content to lounge about gorging himself, the Indonesian Chester bounds eagerly through a cornfield in pursuit of his treats. For some semi-familiar cheesiness, one must turn to “American Cheese” flavor:

In one of my more homesick moments I purchase some mediocre peanut butter and bread. I eat mediocre peanut butter sandwiches every other meal for a few days. The only available peanut butter is creamy, I have to spread it with the flat handle of a spoon** and the flimsy local bread sort of falls apart… Anywhere else these would be tragic sandwiches, but they suit my specific need here perfectly.

**When they eat with utensils here it’s usually just a knife and a spoon. In other words, there is a shortage of butter knives.

Some good news! In another reversal on something we’d been told all along, it turns out Regular (one-year) Program Darmasiswa students will receive college credit for our studies here. Of course, I don’t know how PSU will choose to categorize those credits or how long it will take ISI Jogja to send the particulars for transferring those credits. Those are worries for another day!

More amusing “English” slogans on signs around town:

You heard it here first: YAMAHA Motorcycles = "The Spirit Of Indie".

Next: The Post-Ramadan wrap-up!

Part Two

2008-09-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Yogyakarta By Night

Eyeballing the distance from Jakarta to Yogyakarta on a map, I had pegged it at not much more than 200 miles. Apparently it is considerably farther! Our bus route winds through slow-moving Java highways, with bathroom/food stops every two hours. The journey takes all night.

When we arrive in the morning we are informed that the Darmasiswa Initiative is paying for two nights in the luxuriously dilapidated Hotel Rose, after which time our lodging will be up to us. We are urged to find a place to live quickly.

I find a place relatively quickly; a tiny apartment above a nice lady named Susi’s house/batik shop. Susi speaks good English, the room is affordable and meets my needs*… it looks good. It’ll be ready at the end of the week. Score one for taking care of things promptly!

The next day our program administrator at ISI Jogja shows up for a meeting wearing this:

He says it was a gift from his friend, a U of O teacher who was also the first person to major in Jewelry there. I demonstrate the reaction sending this photo will elicit from certain friends [a resounding “GO DU-UUUCKS!!!”]… He seems quite pleased. During all subsequent interactions he addresses me as Mr. Oregon. I have no problem with this.

After being distracted by all the buses, hotels, orientation, and general “moving to another country” business, the first trip to the ISI Jogja campus reminds we why I wanted to come here in the first place. [“Oh yeah, I’m studying awesome art that’s going to help me get way better…”]

First classes are profoundly exciting. This is my classroom:

Since ISI Jogja is considered one of the best places in the world to study wayang kulit and gamelan, I had feared that the wizened masters we’re studying under would have no patience for my foreignness and lack of Indonesian language skills. As it turns out, they are really nice, laid-back dudes who mostly seem amused by my fumbling Indonesian. So far I understand maybe 10% of what’s spoken, but since the classes are performance-based, they can typically demonstrate proper technique without language. One of my three(!) classmates translates the rough gist of parts I miss. I still need to learn the language ASAP** [and I’m making progress] but for the time being things are workable.

I have three classes this semester: Wayang Kulit puppeteering, Gamelan, and Voice (singing gamelan tunes). Gamelan is a lot math-ier than I had realized. With all due modesty, learning a series of relatively simple parts layered over one another with just enough changes to make it tricky [hence, more rewarding] to play causes me to think several times: “This works a lot like something I would write!”

It occurs to me that I shouldn’t get distracted from what I’m doing here by the awesomeness of what I’m doing here. Once we get further into the school year I trust this feeling will fade. Or not...

As for the city itself, Jogjakarta is enjoyable and not too hard to get around. Much of the city is still in ruins from the big earthquake a few years ago. The pollution is less pronounced than in Jakarta, the air isn’t quite as thick.

This is an Indonesian hamburger:

The whole thing is soggy enough to necessitate the knife and fork, but the chili sauce and cucumber contribute to a unique taste sensation. Recommended!

On an unrelated note: I learned the Indonesian word for intestinal worms is cacing, pronounced “chuh-chinnngggg!”

By the end of the week, the apartment is finally ready. I move in. I pay my rent for the year.

Moving in was the last loose end I was waiting to take care of. I am now officially living here. Most of me is excited and fully committed to this adventure. It’s good; I know it’ll ultimately be great. But I confess: there’s a part of me that hates me for leaving Portland. It howls and claws bitterly at its cage, gnashing empty gums. It’s a fearful, petty feeling I’m not particularly proud of that should –I hope- subside soon enough. But two weeks in, I definitely miss everyone at home.

Maybe it’s best to close things here with two amusing scenes from the Malioboro mall:

*It’s two small adjoining rooms, really just enough space for a bed and a desk to work at. Similar to a less-than-optimal living situation I enjoyed a few years ago… Fingers crossed that a foreign setting and renewed sense of artistic purpose can keep this from ending up like that did. Ohhhhh my!

**Funny thing about that… While all the Darmasiswa literature said we’d be studying Indonesian along with the area of art/culture we’d chosen, it turns out they meant they assume we’ll study Indonesian while we’re here but that isn’t included in the scholarship. Oops! Make that two languages I get to learn Independent Study-style!

Note: there are more Indonesian graffiti photos here and I put grainy digital-camera video here. More soon!