...post-looptopia, 14 hours flying west...

…long strange flight after a surreal night spent surfing Looptopia and the attention-getting influences of my aesthetically affluent friends, sleepless yogis & fire-spinning fashionistas, beltin’ divas rocking hot mics & House wax, in an imperial room filled with balloon blowing tricksters, dial tweaking projectionists, & spinster-mystics weaving sacred threads through elaborate silkscreens. After a night spent glorying in the community of artists I’m blessed to run with, I headed home, packed in a hurry, and transited to the bleary-eyed limbo that is O’Hare airport. Caught flight AA289 business class to Shanghai, and spent the next 14 hours languishing in the middle seat of the plane’s middle aisle, sandwiched between two beefy midwestern guys on a trip to see their manufacturer, a supplier of steel tools. Good people. Unappetizing airplane food, and lots of small courses at oddly timed intervals. Long strange trip to an unknown nation, a red entity riddled with communist capitulations to capitalist cash flows… a week of contradictions to contemplate…
for some looptopia footage featuring my fire arts troupe Blaze, check out:
http://www.windycitizen.com/node/1250


my colleague Eli at work, who’s been to Shanghai and is quite the globe trotter, handed me a copy of the latest National Geographic edition, which is an issue devoted entirely to China, and has some great photography and articles. I spent the last hour or so before landing in Shanghai flipping through it… pick up a copy if you see it on a newsstand, it’s a great 360 look at a country most of us don’t know much about…

Watched a few flicks on the plane. Finally saw “The Kite Runner”, a glorious film based on the award-winning novel by Khaled Hosseini, documenting one Afghani family’s story over the period of 1970-1996, a look at one bloodlines’ experience of the fall of Afghanistan to the Russians & the Taliban. It paints the most vivid picture of Kabul I’ve ever come across. The film featured gorgeous cinematography, endearing characters, and was well paced and directed from what looks to have been a very effective treatment of the novel. I highly recommend it. Unlike the rest of Chicago’s well-read desi literati, I haven’t read the original book. Perhaps I’ll get to it in time, but for peeps like me who are way the hell behind on their reading lists, the movie’s worth the price of admission…

Also watched “O Brother Where Art Thou” the Coen brother's quirky take on Homer’s “The Odyssey,” set in depression-era Mississippi, starring a motley crew of fabulous actors and featuring the best old-timey music most folks have never heard. Tommy Johnson, in the movie, is played by a leading light of the Baton Rouge blues scene, a man by the name of Chris Thomas King, who I saw at BluesFest in Chicago in 2000. Back then, before this movie came out, he was a rather obscure son of a local Louisiana legend, Tabby Thomas, and he threw down a blistering set that left a really powerful impression on me. He’s one of the guys at the forefront of what he calls “21st Century Blues,” with metal and hip hop influences and a whole strange cocktail of nutty sounds thrown into the mix for good measure. His music is well worth checking out, and he even put out an album called “the Legend of Tommy Johnson,” very reminiscent of Robert Johnson’s stripped down sound, but better produced... Anyhow, if you haven’t seen “O Brother Where Art Thou,” it’s well worth it, and rewards multiple viewings… Good music, a great premise, wonderful acting, and a hilarious script.


Also watched about 6 episodes of The Office. Gottta love an airline that have an entire season of the Office available on your screen… J The flight went by fast, although I didn’t get nearly enough sleep. Jet lag is in order, due to my sporadic sleep habits of late… 14 hours of airtime does a number on your head…