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Battling the King of Wealth

Posted by :James Howden On : February 14, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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For an hour and a half, I’ve been fighting. From just before 7, the outbreaks of man-made thunder began. I fought the adolescent curses that leapt to my mind. I stayed still in my bed, calming my mind with whatever detachment and fatigue could do. Some of the explosions were just rumbliings from a distance, but there have been at least 30 outbreaks of the kind that jolt you. (Vipassana bride has been trying to meditate her way through. I am writing, but I want to hurt people.) Ten or so of these long skeins of firecrackers have been set off right outside our apartment building. My first half hour of relative equanimity, acceptance, and “it is what it is” was bludgeoned into irritation, resentment and rage. Adrenaline. I want to fight, or to run far away.

God of wealth, my sworn enemy.

It is the fifth morning after the big barrage of Chinese New Year’s eve. Something like this has happened every morning,  but not so insistently as this. (Inscrutability: this is no doubt some special kind of day. Oh, it’s special, all right!*) Each new kraa-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka lasts about 15 seconds, though I’ve seen guys set off ribbons of red that bang on for a minute or more, leaving a spreading heap of red paper casings on the ground.

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High-Decibel Tradition

Posted by :James Howden On : February 10, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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The view from our living room. For hours and hours.

The worst of the bombardment is over now, and I’ve been remembering why we made sure to be out of the country for the last two Chinese New Year celebrations. We hunkered down, in 2010, in disbelief and eventual festering resentment as the windows rattled in our then-2nd-floor apartment, and said, “Never again.” This year, we stayed again, and up ’til last night I was feeling pretty good about how calm and accepting I’m getting in my adaptation to life in Dalian. Now I’m wondering. I have such a bad fireworks hangover, and a generally and thoroughly bad attitude about Zhongguo today. This will pass, I know. I wish all my Chinese friends here and abroad xin nian kuai le; forgive me, though, for also wishing that the passage to the Year of the Snake hadn’t had to be so relentlessly bombastic and seemingly eternal. Grumble.

Do you like fireworks? I do. (I did.) For our first two years living in Dalian, we made extraordinary efforts to wrap up our academic duties quickly so that we could be home for Canada Day, the July 1 national holiday. We lived in the nation’s capital, and the music and fireworks next to the Parliament buildings and the Ottawa River made us feel at home and grateful, jet-lagged as we inevitably were. My enthusiasm-prone bride, however, said this morning, “Maybe we don’t need to hustle right back for July 1 this year.” We had about 23 consecutive displays last night, the eve of the Snake. 

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The One That Got Away

Posted by :James Howden On : February 8, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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Some people meditate on holy texts, and some people try to clear their minds of language. Some write, some run, some garden or knit or walk, some just sit or doodle or smoke as their way to reflect. Many people, of course, never allow their minds the luxury of slowing down (a little), of reducing the stream of incoming information (for a moment) so they can think. I build contemplation into my life in various ways, writing being one of them, and this week I have spent many hours reflecting on the Super Bowl, the championship game of the National Football League in the United States.  Some of this was intentional.

A monumental event, a cultural festival.

I sat down with friends to watch this game, which is an annual cultural earthquake that rattles every corner of American life. For football fans, including Canadians, it’s an important game,  but it goes 20,000 leagues past a simple sports championship. Some people seriously argue that there should be a week’s holiday surrounding Game Day, or perhaps following it. Consider: the last three Super Bowls (XLV through XLVII, and don’t leave out the Roman numerals!) have been the three most-watched TV events in American history. Nearly 50% of all U.S. households tuned in, 60% in Baltimore, home of the champion Ravens. By the tense conclusion, about 115 million Americans were watching. Every year, the size of the advertising bonanza grows, with companies shelling out nearly four million dollars to CBS, the broadcaster, for each 30-second slot. People all over North America are still chattering about the ads, which have become a spectacle in themselves, attracting excited interest even from those who wouldn’t cross the street to watch the game. Millions of dollars and months of preparation went into the super-diva Beyonce’s half-time show. It’s kind of a big deal.

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Super Bowl Monday II

Posted by :James Howden On : February 8, 2013
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Category: All About Sports

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A guided tour of America…

This is PART TWO of my extended riff on watching Super Bowl XLVII. Please click HERE to read Part One.  

11:25 a.m., Dalian, China. Jimmy, get out of the bathroom! Jimmy! JIMMY! 109 yards in 11 clock seconds, according to The Heads, went Jacoby Jones with the 2nd half kickoff. In the pantheon forever. the unbreakable record. Rayvens 28, Forty-winkers 6. (Cheap shot. Sorry. Also, the return was recalibrated at 108 yards. So there’s room for improvement. Whew.)

Off to the races from the 2nd half kick-off, Jacoby Jones gallops.

11:30. The lights go down in the Superdome, and the Three Wise Men and I share a collective Uh-oh! Talk turns to jihadists and fear-mongering possibility and Black Sunday – the movie – and this is the way the world goes.

11:32. The realtor as hero: the Century 21 Man saves the wedding. (We are all heroes, insofar as we support the consumer economy.) Blah. I’m getting tired of this. The thrill is gone. But the Blackberry commercial got my attention: “In 30 seconds, it’s easier to show you what it can’t do.” Great song, easy-going, in the background. Jimmy thinks it was Pitbull. I don’t know what that means. (Matters not, as the song was “Who Knows” by Marion Black; the Wise Men and Me ain’t got no soul.) Oh, my goodness, and Air Force One has been de-tailed! People have been sucked out of a plane at high altitude and we are all to believe that they are still alive! (How can fact and science and logic match up to Marvel-at-the-Movies?) It’s Iron Man 3. Coming May 3, coming to save the POTUS and his high flyers and redeem our boredom. (I was quite surprised to have had a good time at Iron Man, before it needed a ‘1’ behind it: good acting, and snappy dialogue along with the CGI. I’m not sure there are enough new ideas, in the same way that the Star Trek reboot will suffer the inevitable sequel Scarecrow disease: no brain.)

11:33. Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, CBS’s voices of choice, can’t be heard because of the blackout. Sideline reporter Steve Tasker doesn’t know WHAT the hell to say. Thank goodness for commercials.

11:35. “It’s Febberary…Febuary…Febwuary.” Isn’t it funny how nobody can actually pronounce that month? A little, I guess. Out-takes are always fun. Subway’s is doing something in February that we should all be very excited about. (No mention, then, of restoring the lost inch to their alleged footlongs. Scandal.). Oh, and earlier, various stars (largely unrecognized by me) congratulated the famous Jared on the 15th anniversary of his sub-inspired weight loss. An iconic tale of modern America: man beats obesity and keeps it beat. Heroes are everywhere. (Jared did not look well to me, when I replayed the spot next day.)

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Super Bowl Monday

Posted by :James Howden On : February 8, 2013
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Category: All About Sports

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A guided tour of America via televisual sport.

Think of it as cultural introspection. Football for fun and insight. 

Don’t be afraid.

A Tale of Two Harbaughs, Two QBs, & Two Linebackers

9:01 a.m. Monday. This is when you watch Super Bowl XLVII if you’re in China and you live two bus stops from Jimmy D’s place, where this wild-eyed NFL evangelist subscribes to Game Pass. (The game started at 7:30 our time, but we’re not crazy.) While Mad Jim puts the final touches on his breakfast burritos, we wait for the alleged gang to arrive. (Brackets like this, in this tangled story, usually mean that I got thinking more about this stuff once the Super Bowl had settled a bit in my mind. It has taken a few days. There’s a lot to think about. Note: this post gets long. Sit back. Relax.)

9:11 a.m. Bad Jim just burst my bubble. This telecast is likely pre-cut. There’ll be no pre-game, but then I’ve had enough in my ill-spent past of talking heads and pre-game hype, and Grantland’s Bill Barnwell and crew have given me all I need of pre-apocalyptic analysis. (If you promise to come back, I will link you to this great sports and pop culture site. But no pride-of-America national-anthem-as-sacrament? No over-indulgent commercials, no insert-hyphenated-adjective-here  half-time show?!) I wanted the whole experience. I wanted to see what the brightest, most creative minds in the Excited States of America have made to mould and incite our consumer purpose. Bring it to me, TV!!

9:15. Burritos chewing, game on. I’ve read much more – he’s been an introverted flashpoint for pigskin opinionating – about the Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco than I’ve seen, which basically amounts to their AFC championship beating of the New England Bradys, and this opening series. He throws beautiful balls, so fluid, so confidently commanding. Baltimore is off and throwing. It doesn’t look like the constipated, conservative, No Fun League Super Bowls that I got tired of in the 90s and early 2000s. (Our little-brother Canadian Football League’s Grey Cup championship was routinely a better game than the Hyper Bowl. But enough of Canuck chauvinism.) But it’s going to be all football, which I’m adjusting to. I guess I can watch the commercials later if I really want to. Nearly $4 million to buy 30 seconds, I’ve read. What a world.

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Two Questions. Two Footnotes. (And a half-sheepish postscript.)

Posted by :James Howden On : February 4, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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 2:58 a.m.

What am I reading from, or whose is the voice I hear, when I wake in the darkness and, in the super-lucid moments before so-called full consciousness (so dim is it, so ponderous after the clarity of leaving-sleep), but still vividly in my racing memory, I hear an over-voice reciting1 – yes, and there was music to it, multimedia aspects, like an ultra-magazine from some attention-deficit future – and the voice and the repeating crescendo of the music2 spoke of things the movies have taught us, such as how we cherish the idea of retraining ourselves, remaking ourselves, perhaps learned from the example of American army training videos, or the joy of (what was it?) making curving paraffin candles dripping with arcing light, yes, like the ones in that Tom Cruise movie where his daughter (Kelly McGillis, in an uncredited role) [waking mind: waitaminute!  Whothehell has heard of Kelly McGillis in alltheseyears? but in the dream this fact is wonder full] is, blue-eyed, something, there was dripping light, SOMETHING, the connection is breaking up, the voice stutters and sparks but I can still (almost) recall it: I ask again, what is this text? Whose is this voice?

Does anyone read to you like this in your half-light moments, words spooling out as if revealed?

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The Howdy TOP 10 (as chosen by, well, me!)

Posted by :James Howden On : January 31, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you…”

That was Walt Whitman, the famous “Song of Myself”, encouraging me from beyond the beyond not to be shy to tell you what I like, even if it’s me. Alrighty, then.

Even by Chinese standards, I’m a little slow to jump on the New Year’s Look-back train. Still, it was a good excuse to browse through some of my 2012 posts, and enjoy them as a reader. Here are ten JH.com posts that might be worthwhile reads for you, too, in reverse chronological order. )Some of them have pictures, my newest baby-step into on-line competence.)

1. February 1. “Not My Brother’s YMCA” starts as a Hong Kong travel piece, and ends in memory of a friend.

2. April 12. “Hessler’s Rivertown“ is a book review, part of a series I call “Better Read Than Never”, about a young American’s first two years in China. Peter Hessler went on to write two more books on this country, and he’s graceful and good. I reviewed four other books under the “Better Read” rubric last year.

3. May 19. “Why Do Men Love Sports So Much?”   is a lengthy answer to a question that is more important than it may sound. I put it in the “On Second Thought” section, ’cause it’s long and I’ve sweated over it. I should sell it. I should develop it into a book. I think it’s pretty good, but be warned: it’s not a tweet.

4. June 16. “NBA Finals: It’s Morning in China” is another long piece, but sits in the “It’s All About Sports” section of the site. It’s a play-by-play, commercial-by-commercial, digression-by-digression log of watching a big NBA game from the other side of the globe. It tells as much about me, and about my views of China, as it does about LeBron. It’s a bit wacky.

5. August 15. “Driving Miss Piggy (Crazy)” is a light-hearted account of my pitched battle with the Chinese language, and some of the collateral damage from it. (Again, apologies to the lovely Ms. Zhu.)

6. September 19. “NINE-EIGHTEEN: Face to (Losing) Face in Asia” is a local glance at a consuming, nervous-making bit of political intrigue in the East.

7. November 17. “Is China Really Upside-Down?” takes a look at childish ideas of geography and global orientation in the light of my lived experience of what makes China deeply the same and profoundly different than my ol’ Canucky home. It got me thinking so much I had to post “Another Thing!” a few days later.

8. November 23. “Afternoon on an Overpass” brought me face to face with injustice and the bitter banalities of every day.

9. November 28. “Old Guy Glory: Still Got It! (One day.)” recounts the stirring and inspiring tale of an old guy showing the youngsters a thing or three. (Well, I had fun.) One of these days there’ll be photo evidence. This giddy piece makes a good counterpoint to my recent court misadventures, and my scarred forehead is a fair argument against further foolishness. (But not a persuasive one!)

10. December 8. “Lightning in My Living Room” is my retelling of a remarkable, head-scratching, where in the world is this going evening in Apartment 902, a close encounter of the sectarian kind.

Are these my best? Heck if I know! as they may still say in the valley of the Grand River, back home in corn country. They’re ten I’ll stand by, anyway, which makes it a little easier to sing along with Walt.

 

Edith Hamilton (Weston) Main

Posted by :James Howden On : January 29, 2013
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Category: At First Glance

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The picture I remember best is an old black-and-white that I only saw a couple of times. Her hair is long and loose, her smile carelessly radiant, and her eyes draw one’s gaze again and again. She’s young, and she’s gorgeous, and it surprised a teenaged me to see the middle-aged, slightly doughy housewife – the one who had so lovingly welcomed, guided, and cared for me – looking so confident and free. I had known her as a quiet, self-effacing baker of cherry cheesecake and dispenser of tea, but here she looked like a screen star. This was my future mother-in-law, likely at about the age of her daughter when I married her. She was Edith, “Mother Main” (and not just to me), but I mostly called her Mum. I still do, though it’s been years since I’ve seen her.

The other photo comes 50 years later, I guess. It is more formal, a rather conventional studio shot that can’t hide her silvered, warm-eyed beauty. She is again slender, and her quiet dignity is clear. By this time, she was my ex-mother-in-law, marital fortunes being what they are in these times and in this heart. I was grateful when that same daughter, re-married, as I am, emailed from afar to let me know that Edith was preparing for take-off. She had turned 89 weeks before, and her life had become a smaller and smaller thing. She hung on for another week, and last Wednesday flight confirmation arrived. Friday’s funeral was not a tragic one.

Except that for me, it partly was.

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Another Hit to the Head

Posted by :James Howden On : January 27, 2013
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Category: All About Sports

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McDonald’s is not a place I often go when I’m home in Canada, but in Dalian, it’s a bit of a treat. (All things are relative, my friends.) I began this post, which  begins as an adventure in middle-aged basketball and ends with a journey through Chinese health care, under the golden arches. Last Christmas, I gave you my heart / The very next day, you gave it away / This year, to save me from tears, / I’ll give it to someone special… (Wham!) The Mai dang lao Christmas collection, which I know shockingly well, is still going strong. “Jingle Bells”, a distressingly perky version, just ended. This is a place I sometimes come to avoid the distractions of home! I am the King of Distraction. Speaking of which, here’s the story I wanted to tell.

For the second straight day, I got a call to play some basketball. Normally, that’s not great for the ol’ body, but I hadn’t played very hard Tuesday night. When Yinghua, a former student and a pretty good player, invited me to join him yesterday afternoon, there was no NO there. Projects I was fitfully working at were shelved; even when I was perched at the keyboard, I found myself Mentally Preparing to Play as if this game actually meant something. The King, indeed, but even codgers need something to look forward to. What I hadn’t prepared for was getting decked twice, and staggering away with a pair of more or less serious boo-boos.

Another day, no boo-boos. AND I blocked this shot, I swear!

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Back To You, Mai Di: T-Mac II (Updated)

Posted by :James Howden On : January 22, 2013
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Category: All About Sports

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T-Mac, all smiles with Wang Hai, Eagles owner.

It’s time for an update on Tracy McGrady’s sometimes bizarre, steadily surprising adventures as a basketball nomad in Qingdao, a coastal city in China. When last I wrote of the former NBA scoring champion, his Double Star Eagles were on an epic losing streak to the start the season, which eventually reached 12 painful games. Things are looking better recently, though most of my main questions remain the same. I’m not one to sneer at an athlete on the way down, but his career in China so far makes an interesting story, and perhaps a sad one.

The Eagles look to extend a recent winning streak to six when they visit the second-place Shandong Flaming Bulls tonight, who are led by Pooh Jeter, Jackson Vroman and the Jordanian forward Zaid Abbas. (Any bells ringing? Jeter played at Portland — and his sister is the gold medal sprinter — and Vroman at Iowa State.) The game may even make CCTV 5. When I last reported back in December, McGrady (Mai Di, as he is called in this country) was about to break loose for 41 points, albeit in the last game of the big losing streak. Here’s how it has looked since then.

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