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Xopher

xopher

About Me


Wordblog / PhotoblogI want to have my own island-fortress, and on this island I will live like a king -- totally self-sufficient. That's my style. I shall hire Bolo Yeung as my top enforcer and head of my army and I'll recruit all the foxiest and deadliest female assassins in the world to be my personal bodyguards. My only contact with the outside world will be through the martial arts tournaments I'll hold every three years. I know, I know -- its been done before; but unlike Mr. Han, I'll be smart enough to allow guns on MY island. That way, if some gwai-lo government agency hires Bruce Lee to infiltrate my tournament, revealing my secret heroin-producing factory/addict slave-trade ring and kill me, I can just pull a .45 and BANG! settle it. That's the technique I use, see? And now that I'm retired from visual effects, I think I just may be able to pull it off.

My Interests

"The world is my country, all humankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion." I'm sort of like a globe-trotting Encyclopedia Brown...but older, and with fewer mysteries to solve. I dig traveling, learning, building walls out of empty Pocky boxes, investigating intriguing phenomena, secular humanism, skepticism, Scrabble, films, Beard Papa , theobroma cacao (and I ain't talking about that American chocolate that tastes like wax), yum cha, Chano's Mexican cuisine (any kind of food, actually. I'm down with the Chowhounds . My retired life seems to revolve around where my next meal is coming from and how good it's going to taste), history, art, linguistics, diving, photography, painting, absinthe, KCRW, my new hybrid car.

I'd like to meet:

Now accepting applications: potential candidates for positions in either my female bodyguard/assassination squad or my male personal army. Prior experience as a ninja or guang hu warrior preferred. Must be enthusiastic, loyal, and able to follow orders without question.

Music:

Hip-Hop, downtempo, house, turntablism, jungle, classical, electronica, exotica, eclectica, etcetera.

Movies:

Kung Fu Hustle, Survive Style 5+, Oldboy, Shimotsuma monogatari, Finding Neverland, The Graduate, Wild Style, The Harder They Come, House of Flying Daggers, Baraka, Hero, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Cidade de Deus, Fist of Legend, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hidden Fortress, Lost in Translation, The Big Lebowski, Chungking Express, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Master of the Flying Guillotine, Drunken Master II, Y tu mamá también, Amélie, Shaolin One, The Iron Giant, Run Lola Run, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Yojimbo/Sanjuro, Il Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Bottle Rocket, The Party, Swordsman II

Television:

"I want to be...on an island -- without Ricardo Montalban. No more TV, no fantasy. I just want to be me..."The revolution will not be televised...in the meantime I'll watch Nova.

Books:

The Razor's Edge, Ishmael, Musashi, A People's History of the United States, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Age of Reason, Norwegian Wood, South of the Border, West of the Sun, Lies My Teacher Told Me, FRUITS, Siddhartha, Sand and Foam, Lonely Planet Guidebooks, Les Miserables, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Slaughterhouse-Five, The Count of Monte Cristo, In the Heart of the Sea, Into Thin Air, The Tao of Pooh, The Buddha of Suburbia, We Wish To Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families, Guns, Germs & Steel, Fast Food Nation, A Million Little Pieces, The English Patient, Giant Robot. Currently reading: The Lonely Planet Japanese Phrasebook.

Heroes:

Shih Kien, Wong Fei Hung, Fong Sai Yuk, Carl Sagan

My Blog

C'est finis.

My blog is migrating. From here to there. I'll still be lurking around, but if you're looking for my latest thoughts on any given topic or what's going down in my life, check out The Lancelot Link a...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

I don't got your back

From the New York Times, 18 February, 2005: "The People's Republic of China," Mr. Rumsfeld said, "is a country that we hope and pray enters the civilized world in an orderly way without the grindin...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

KARATE FIGHTERS ONLY

I watch a lot of kung fu movies, as you can probably tell from my "list". One of the plot singularities of these films that I love the most is when one guy is like, "Hey Holmes, I just learned a new ...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Thai Yo

I'm not talking about the sushi joint on Franklin. A few weeks ago I posted that I still hadn't heard from Yo in Phuket and that I was worried: I neglected to post up when I DID finally hear from...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Redux: The Saga of the OCTOPENIS

***Searching through all the old shit stored in the overcrowded attic of my hotmail account, I came across a few noteworthy emails from my past. I've decided to throw some of them up here because...w...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Special Ops Cody held for ransom

The war in Iraq has taken a tragic turn. (I avoid the term 'insurgency' because, with this latest development, the situation has clearly escalated.) Iraqi guerrillas have kidnapped an action figure ...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Back to work

Yesterday I stealthily came out of retirement. That's my style. I started work on a movie at the 4-wall studio in Century City where I spent about four months last year. The film is not VFX heavy, ...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Word from Thailand

After five days, I finally got a reply from a friend at the Andaman Nature Resort in Ao Ton Sai, Krabi: to my relief, the staff there are all safe. Her email follows below. I'm still waiting to hear...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

New Photos!

My body is back from Asia, but my circadian rhythms are still in the far east. I flew into LAX early Saturday morning and slept in until 7 pm, and the result is that I'm still wide awake (it's now 08:...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST

Offline in Hong Kong

I'll be in a relative state of absence for three weeks. And by that I mean that I'll be in Hong Kong and Shanghai with limited internet access. So take care of America for me while I'm gone. And by ta...
Posted by Xopher on Mon, 01 Jan 1900 12:00:00 PST