Some nights are just perfect, you know? Y’all know what I’m talking about? I don’t have a lot to write for day #2 in Singapore, since I spent the day at work and only had the evening to continue my explorations. But man, I had a great night the other night. Just awesome.

I got home around 7pm and took a quick shower before heading off to see what Arab Street was about. ‘Arab Street’ is sort of what they call the Arab section of town, although there is an actual Arab Street as well. I took a cab the short distance to a small area of about 3 square blocks containing little alleys and side streets. Despite the short paragraph I had printed from the interweb describing the area as bustling and lively, with shops and markets selling batiks and clothes and stuff, it was instead really quiet and people were relatively sparse – quite a change from the packed streets of Little India the night before. It might have had to do with the fact that it had been raining earlier, but I also think that part of town grows quiet earlier than other neighborhoods.

I spent about forty minutes walking through the whole area, turning down narrow alleys and side streets, doubling back here and there, and just getting a feel for the neighborhood while I worked up an appetite and looked for a place to eat. There is a huge mosque in the center of the neighborhood, with tall minarets at each corner and a massive dome – all were lit beautifully, and the mosque was surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron fence that was painted green and yellow. The mosque itself was painted in shades of vanilla, brown, light blue and light yellow. There was an area to the left of the mosque for washing feet, a pretty, blue tiled sort of open-air space with stone stools and faucets at knee-level; some men were washing their feet for the evening prayer. The call to prayer began at 8pm, a loud, haunting sound that emanated from speakers mounted in the minarets. I tried to see whether one of the minarets had an actual muezzin up there doing his thing, but I think he was down below in the mosque, using a mic or something. Makes sense, I suppose.

After thoroughly traversing the neighborhoods and concluding that only cafes and restaurants were open, I selected one on a corner – I believe it was Samar. Man, I had a great night there. I sat outside in a super-comfy leather chair and had a wonderful meal – some Batiti Ma’li, a dish of potatoes (essentially steak fries) cooked in a tomato sauce with onions and spices; a plate of dajaj mahammer, which is chicken breast that is braised then roasted with spices and yogurt; and some basmati rice and Arabic iced tea, which is tea infused with orange and lime juice. Super tasty. I felt so mellow and easy, and everything was just perfect: the slight smell of incense wafting through almost the entire neighborhood, the cool breeze, the excellent food…it was all good in the purest sense of the term. When I paid up, I noticed that there was a) a huge sword on the cashier’s desk and b) a photo of Arafat from back in the day. I asked the woman when she thought the photo was taken, guessing the 70s, and she said, “Maybe the 60’s? I’m not sure. He still looks the same though, but more handsome back then.” It was a funny moment. She had no discernible accent whatsoever. Nothing from Asia, or the Middle East, nothing from Europe…I wondered where she had grown up. I guess I should have asked.

I decided to walk home again this night, especially since it was so pleasant out and my journey was even shorter this time. I strolled down the wide boulevard known as North Bridge Road, checking out the locals and some tourists and stopping off for a couple brews at the 7-11 (the non-romantic part of this post, I guess). Then it was back to the hotel for some mellow classical music and a little reading, and off to bed I went. A truly wonderful night.

Oh yeah. One other thing I didn’t mention in the first post. The morning I left for Singapore, I had both a Whopper and a glass of champagne before 9am. Yes, I did. Yep. Sure did. I know, I’m fucking disgusting. But sometimes you climb that mountain just because it is there….and of all the things that are available in Asia that are not available in the US, a Whopper in the morning just happens to be one of them. So that’s what I had. The champagne was on the airplane, lest you think I had both at the same time….

Chucky

Singapore.

First of all, I gotta say that there’s a really scary picture of Micheal Jackson on the 1010WINS homepage. He looks like a cross between a woman and one of those skull-faced Martians from Mars Attacks! You know that can’t be good.

This town is pretty cool despite the fact that, as I just pointed out in an email to a friend, I could be executed for doing some of the things I do back in the US – perhaps, even, some of the things that you are doing right now. As you read this. There’s a tourist t-shirt that says “Singapore – a fine city” and below that is a list of all the things you can’t do over here and what the penalties are ($500 for littering, $500 for spitting, a caning for larceny, execution for possession of drugs over 20 grams, etc). But the truth is that Singapore really is a fine and beautiful place. It reminds me of Miami when I was a boy, or Miami in the 1950s, which most of us only access during that short section of the Godfather trilogy when Michael goes down to Miami. It’s clean, tidy, sunny, warm, well landscaped and manicured, and full of both wide boulevards and cozy side streets.

In fact, my arrival on the airplane became a succession of reminders of times past; not memories, but little sights and smells that conjured memories. As we landed, the blue-green bay - replete with ships, groups of small sailboats, and the lone sailboarder – along with the Australian pines at water’s edge and the perfectly landscaped bushes and trees along the runway, reminded me of Miami Beach in my youth. As we taxied past the airport fire station alongside the runway, a small grouping of low white buildings with aqua trim and pumps and so on, I was reminded of field trips to various fire stations and water treatment plants when I was a boy. Miami at one time had enough money to make even the most unsightly utility look like a pleasant place to work; now Miami only has enough money to make the really rich people even richer, and everyone and everything else can fucking get nothing and like it.

A few short minutes later, as I walked up the aqua-carpeted jetway, I caught a moldy smell (from the carpet, no doubt) that generated a strong memory of old pool locker rooms and cabanas from the country clubs and run-down hotels I would sneak into when I was a kid. One after another, they came.

So, that’s that. It’s a lot like Miami, and not just because of my memories. As I rode into town in the cab, we passed under large, broad angsana trees that filled both sides of the road and provided ample shade. Beneath them were flower bushes, shrubs, yacht clubs, little strip malls, and other signifiers of a tropical city. The hotel is nice enough – quite nice, actually, though it is the Raffles Plaza and not the classic Raffles hotel, located across the street and a symbol of the colonial days of yore. Mine is more of the tower-and-parking-garage ilk, but the room is very well-appointed, and dig - there’s one of those overhead rainshower heads like you see in the ads in the New Yorker. Big old head with like 80 holes for pouring down on yo’ ass. Very nice. And you don’t step into a shower, really – the bathing area is separated from the rest of the bathroom by half a glass wall, and you sort of just stand next to the bathtub under this shower – somewhat similar to what F's family has going in Maine. To borrow once again from Nelson Muntz, it’s the kind I like!

After unpacking and waiting for a brief rain to pass, I walked down to Chinatown, taking some photos of local tags as I went. It was a little muggy after the rain, but still very nice out. I passed over a canal with all these little cafes alongside it and water taxis that reminded me of Bangkok, and soon I was in Chinatown. How do I describe this place? It’s busy, full of life and color. There are shops, restaurants, and a huge bazaar that sells all sorts of stuff for both locals and tourists – clothing of every type, clocks, watches, trinkets, underwear, tea, lamps, tissue box covers, jewelry, hardware, kitchenware, music, you name it. Narrow aisles are packed with the most colorful items imaginable, including some truly intense Asian dresses and coats and gowns. It would be a great place to eat some acid, though the caning you would get if you got caught would be, like, the antichrist of an acid trip. The bottom level was a huge wet market as well.

Outside the bazaar – in two places, actually – street performers in colorful costumes were doing all kindsa crazy shit. A woman lying on her back was tossing this cushion around with her feet, then she started spinning this huge square with her feet, then flipping it end over end and balancing it on one corner of the frame using one foot. You get the idea. I watched three Caucasian children, obviously siblings, regard the goings-on with stone faced disinterest, arms folded across their chests. I also saw some pretty funny signs, like “Pork Floss” and “BJ Massage” as well as a funny t-shirt on this Singapore version of a hipster chick that said “Fo’ Cheezy!” and had a cartoon drawing of a mouse about to lay into this hunk of cheese. That shirt was mad cheesy fo’ sheezy. There were also several tea shops with huge copper teapots out front for passerby – giant, shiny spheres with dragons. Perhaps the coolest thing about Chinatown is the colonial architecture, similar to that which I saw in Macau: stuccoed two-story buildings with columns and arches over the windows and painted shutters, overlooking small squares or narrow streets. Very cute. Like parts of New Orleans.

Time for food, I say! I found a cool local place on one of the side streets and had a delicious, if messy, lunch of spicy crab and a side of shredded potatoes with green chiles. The battle for the crab meat can be spectacular – you basically need to put down the chopsticks and get a little Fallujan on them – but it’s so worth it. For the record, I just invented the phrase “get Fallujan” even though I am sure that some soldiers have been saying it here and there. I still invented it. Really good food, washed down with a big ol’ Tsingtao. Then back into the fray I went, shopping and taking some more photos, until the beer and sun forced me to grab a cab home for a shower under the Big Head and a quick nap. I was dogged out, believe me – went out like a light.

I woke and dressed for Little India. As some of you may or may not realize, you don’t get a ‘Little’ appellation unless you really got it goin’ on. I mean, you gotta be a lot – a whole lot - like the Thing if you’re going to live up to the name Little Thing. By this measure, Little Italy is in some ways some fake-ass shit, since it’s not a whole lot like Italy at all anymore – Little Odessa is probably closer to the real deal in the realm of the ‘Littles’ – but dude, Little India was the real deal. There were tons and tons of Indian men everywhere, loud, busy bazaars with barkers and Hindi music, all kinds of open-air restaurants, folks walking in the road along with the traffic, long-bed Toyota pickups with like 8 dudes chilling in the back…it was pretty damn cool. I mean, I’ve never been to India, so my whole “it’s the real deal” thing is a little thin, but it sure seemed more like India than Little Italy seems like Italy. I felt more Other than I’ve ever felt in my life; there were literally thousands of men out on the streets I visited, walking in groups, chilling by their cars, sitting out on the lawns of apartment buildings, and patronizing the restaurants and shops. There was a large, incredibly ornate temple along Serangoon Road with some slight touches of yellow neon on the façade, something I’ve never seen before. I also saw almost no women – about 4 out of maybe five thousand men, including the two women who served me at the place I had dinner.

I ate at a small establishment called Sri Saktivalas. Dig – I didn’t have samosas. I swear to God. Instead I had paper masala dosai, along with some vegetable korma and some saag paneer, which is not called saag paneer over here but it’s still the spinach and cheese just the same. And some naan and a mango lassi – soooo good. For like ten bucks, too. This part of the world ruleth.

After dinner, I just wandered around some more, being fully Other and just chilling. I have come to realize that this is the sort of ‘tourism’ or ‘experience of the world’ which I most prefer; rather than making a list of museums and mosques and temples and war memorials to visit, I much prefer to just walk everywhere I can and experience the city as the locals do. Of course, you know I’m going to the damn Forbidden City and the Great Wall, so I’m not totally going to front like that, but I really do enjoy the experience of just exploring with no map but the one in my head – that way is back to the hotel, that way is where the water is, etc – and seeing what a place is really like, off in the nooks and crannies and the less-traveled streets. I first felt that way in Macau, exploring the neighborhoods with moms, and really enjoy it much more than seeing all the stuff that’s in the tour books.

At that point, I decided to just walk home. It was a nice night, and only a couple miles at most, so why not? I meandered east and south, straying from the main roads and down empty malls with cats scrapping noisily and small groups of 2 or 3 people having a beer at outdoor cafes. It was nice. Shot a couple pictures – of two temples lying almost right next to each other – and came home to another nice rainshower (in my bathroom, that is). Threw on one of the nice terry robes in the closet and watched some SNL from 2001, which was really eerie – basically the Weekend Update mentioned that Osama bin Laden had been seen in a videotape, apparently in good health, attending the wedding of his son. To fete the new couple, Tina Fey said, Osama “blew up a Crate & Barrel.” That joke is so terribly – and I mean terribly - anachronistic, and in such a painful way. Based on other jokes about the inaugural and Katherine Harris, it’s obvious that the show ran very early in 2001 or late in 2000 (on a side note, can you believe that Fallon and Fey have been doing the Update together for that long? I guess he left recently, but still…), and the joke unintentionally reveals this lighthearted approach to the Osama threat, this naïvete that is so crushing to consider now. You can almost imagine Osama seeing that episode, saying, “Ok, fuckers, yeah, Crate & Barrel, whatever. Make your little jokes. I got something for you that’s gonna make you stop laughing with the quickness. Just sit tight. Go to work every day in the autumn.”

That’s it for now. Had a crappy night’s sleep – drank some Coke before bed, like an idiot – and headed on into work today. The office here is small and quiet, and it’s right near the hotel, which is cool. Tonight I’m off to Arab Street for food and perhaps more shopping, and then tomorrow I have the press lunch for which I came to Singapore in the first place. Then it’s back to the Kongsfordshire to start getting all my shit together for moving out of the apartment, Vietnam, and heading home to NYC. I’ll be on that Freedom Bird two weeks from today – SWEET!

More later,

Chucky

China.

Jesus, this is going to be a monster. I may have to do this trip over a few posts (I’ve been saying that for three weeks now – damn the election was a month ago). Well, here goes – I’ll try to make it brief yet interesting and not wander too much.

So, Moms and I flew out in the morning and headed to China with a crapload of Chinese people. Flight was packed. Dragon Air. Pretty decent. Landed and got our bags and made our way to a taxi. The ride into town (our hotel was pretty close, in the northwest corner of Beijing) took about 40 minutes and we didn’t see anything too amazing. Hardly anyone knows English in Beijing, so we crossed our fingers and hoped that the taxi cop guy gave our driver the right directions. We made it, though – sweet. The hotel was a Hilton and it was in a nice, if a bit nondescript, part of town. I would compare it to downtown Minneapolis, except the high-rises are higher and mad ugly. They took all their design flair from the Soviets, which is essentially summed up in the concept of “slap it up in drab concrete and shove a bunch of air conditioners in the side. Paint nothing. Decorate nothing. You’re done.” Some of the newer apartment complexes were a bit more modern looking, but still bore traces of that no-nonsense, cookie-cutter (can I think of another hyphenate adjective?) style. “Stalin’s wedding cake,” I think some call it. I call it “make you want to smoke some chiva if you lived there.”

We unpacked, had a quick lunch in the hotel, and grabbed a cab for the Forbidden City, which is roughly in the center of Beijing and lies just north of Tiananmen Square. Traveling through the city, we saw rows of shops that resembled US strip malls, tons of people on bicycles, even more auto traffic, and residences of various sorts everywhere. The setup was fairly similar everywhere we looked – stores on ground level and the buildings either above the shops or set behind them. Sort of an odd, dense yet sprawling suburbia – despite the density, it’s still able to sprawl due to the sheer size of the city.

We arrived at the north gate, which is called the Divine Military Genius Gate. The entrance was packed with tourists and cats trying to take you around the Hutong (the little narrow neighborhoods and streets around Beijing) on their motorized scooters. We first entered the Imperial Garden, where I think a lot of the virgin concubines lived. To be honest, it was in some ways the most beautiful part of the City, since it was full of rock outcroppings, trees, little gazebo-like chill spots for playing chess and getting buffs, and tiny buildings surrounding the entire garden, which now house jade exhibits and film and camera shops instead of honeydips.

As we went south, we saw several other buildings, large and small, that comprised the Earthly Tranqility Palace, the Hall of Union, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, and so on. You could not enter most of these buildings, but you could look inside through glass windows which were being mobbed by completely unruly mainland tourists. I mean, they were unreal. They would just shove you aside to get a look at some dusty floor cushions that the concubines sat on when they were chilling or entertaining or whatever. That’s the thing about the Forbidden City – it’s really beautiful, but at the same time it’s just not all that. The problem is its size combined with the absence of life; gone are the multitudes of officials, servants, and soldiers in elaborate garb, the incense burning everywhere, the gongs, the horses, and so on. It’s just tons of white courtyards and red buildings. I know that sounds very reductive, and believe me, it’s amazing, but I can’t imagine what it must have been like when it was full of life. I think what impressed me most, both here and at the Summer Palace, were the paintings on the roof beams – elegant, detailed scenes of egrets, ponds, ships, forests, and so on. The ceilings and the roof beams were absolutely stunning. The rest of it was just kind of quiet and had this strange sort of outdoor museum feel to it.

Heading farther south, we passed through the Heavenly Purity Gate (all the shit here has these lofty-ass names) and reached the first of the big open piazza-type areas that you see in like The Last Emperor – huge, wide, broad areas of white stone ringed by the temples in the center and the smaller buildings on either side (the big moat, which surrounds the entire city, lies behind the outer ring of buildings. There are about 800 buildings in the Forbidden City and nine thousand rooms). In the very center of the city lies three structures in a row: the Hall of Preserving Harmony, once used for banquets but which now houses archaeological finds; the Hall of Middle Harmony, a sort of lounge for the emperor; and the Hall of Supreme Harmony, the largest structure in the City and the most important one in terms of ceremonies and such. It was used for coronations, the emperor’s birthday, stuff like that. There’s a huge bronze turtle in the front that would be filled with incense on these occasions so smoke would come out of its mouth. The turtle is a symbol of longevity and stability. Makes sense. The Dragon Throne sits in the center of this structure, and the emperor would sit there and make his decrees (“all decisions final” as the guidebook says). This is the place where the term ‘kowtowing’ originated, and it refers to the requirement that everyone in the hall touch the floor with their foreheads nine times. The eaves and corners of these buildings are elaborate, gold-painted carvings of dragons, and the roofs are rich red barrel tiles. It should be mentioned that there’s work going on everywhere, too – the place is so huge that it is in a constant state of renovation. It’s big enough, however, that the work does not get in your way and you do not feel that you are inconvenienced or missing anything. There’s plenty to see.

Below these three halls lies two more massive courtyards of stone, with huge stone lion statues and bronze statues and separated by the Supreme Harmony Gate. The larger of these two courtyards, between the Supreme Harmony Gate and the above-mentioned Halls of Harmony, could handle ceremonies attended by up to 100,000 people. The other courtyard, also large and south of the gate, may also be familiar to people from various movies: this one has the five marble bridges over the Golden Stream (ha ha, you wrote Golden Stream) which is a common film and postcard shot. This courtyard had a huge photo exhibition that wound its way along the eastern and western sides of the courtyard and exhibited many beautiful shots from around the world – landscapes, shots of war-torn Middle and Far Eastern countries, and the like. Very large and richly saturated photos.

After crossing the bridges, you exit through the massive Meridian Gate, which was formerly used only by the emperor. After that, you walk down this long mall past the Workers’ Cultural Palace and, now that you are out of the part of the City which requires an admission fee, you are once again assaulted by the hawks selling postcards and other crap. It kind of sucks, to be honest, but it’s not so bad. You just have to be firm and keep moving.

So. What was it all for? Why was it so massive, and why were there so many buildings? Well. Ah, yes. I mean basically it was for a lot of fucking. Seriously. Look, the dude (dudes, actually, since there were several emperors over the years) did not need all that space for policymaking and decision making and entertaining ministers and foreign cats. And he did not need all that space for storing gold and rugs and shit like that. You have all of China for that – you don’t need it to be within the walls of your little chill city within a city. However, you DO need that many buildings and rooms and all that if you have 9000 maids of honor and 70,000 eunuchs to care for you and for them, along with mad servants and the posse of royal elephants. The emperor would make his pick for the evening, then a eunuch would go off and wrap her in yellow cloth and backpack her over to the big boy’s feet. It was believed that frequent sex with the young girls prolonged life. Even Mao did it. Ewwwww! Mao, just waxing it backshot style…think of that next time you look at one of those kitschy alarm clocks.

Anyway, I know this is getting long, and I have not even reached the Square yet. Hang in there with me, I’ll get this done. I wish I was trashed or something to make the tale more interesting.

We passed through the final gate and took a few snapshots of the huge portrait of Mao and scoped out some of the soldiers trying to look serious and tough. Tiananmen Square is just south of the Forbidden City on the other side of a wide, busy boulevard, and you can walk to it via an underground pedestrian pass. The Square was as the guidebook described it – lots of people flying kites, some uniformed teens laying sod, some students wanting to practice their English with you…no tank tracks, though. I made a couple jokes about that – “Excuse me, sir. Have you seen any large tanks around here?” Mom didn’t find that funny – but yo, hardly anyone knows English over here! Plus I got to rib the regime a little bit. We were approached by a student who wanted to practice English; his name was Oscar. Nice guy. We even walked across the street with him to the Museum of Chinese Revolution, where his art class had set up all their art (it is a common ploy of artists in the Square to try to sell you art, but we had time and didn’t really care. Plus, moms was looking for some wall hangings for the dining room). I ended up buying a small piece that Oscar painted and then we headed to the south end of the Square to hail a cab. Took down Oscar’s mobile phone number, but I’m not sure when I’ll use it or what I’ll say. “Hey man, I’m back in the States! It was easy as pie! You should get out here sometime!”.

The southern end of the Square is where Mao’s tomb is situated – while we may have been too late to check out his waxen action anyway, neither of us had much desire to see him in the first place. Apparently they do their best with the upkeep, but that’s like this cat I know who only wears clothes produced before 1950 – sooner or later, the relentless march of time is going to make that little project a problem. I mean, damn. 60 year-old underwear? I don’t fucking think so. But, to each his own, you know? He’s a pretty cool cat anyway.

Also at the southern end are these large bronze sculptures about ten meters long and 5 meters high – like a carved façade, but in sculpture form – of various heroes of the Revolution. You know the type – like the famous painting of the heroes of the French Revolution. You got your workers in their work garb, you got your soldiers and your brave women leading the charge, that whole menagerie of people holding hammers and ropes and banners and rakes and shit. I snapped a couple photos and we moved on to about 20 minutes of cab hailing. My moms didn’t want me to run ahead and snake some old folks, right? Then they get in and pass us, and the cat who got in the front seat is laughing at us! Fuckers. I was pissed. I know how some of those old ladies get down in Chinatown – they can poke you in the eye with an umbrella, then just cackle in your face when you get pissy. Whatever, it’s all good. Let the baby have his bottle.

Once we got home, we had a nice dinner at the hotel because we were too bushed to go out and find a restaurant. The meal was good, much better than the usual hotel fare in the US, and we headed up to bed. Had a big day coming tomorrow – the Great Wall and shit. But I’ma save that for the next post because I am mad tired and need to go get some food or something. Peace.

Chucky

So I’m headed to Singapore on Sunday for 3 days. Pretty sweet. Obviously that cuts into my get-shit-done-before-Vietnam schedule, but who cares? I hear it’s pretty cool over there. I find it amusing that you can't spit out gum over there but they have a red light district. I’m sure that there’s some wry joke waiting to be made about Singapore having its priorities straight, but whatev. I’ll leave that to the likes of PJ O’Rourke (who remains my bedtime reading – a couple chapters at 12.30 each night and I’m both entertained and woozy). He’s okay – his writing reminds me of my blog writing, which is to say that I’m not all that impressed. He’s like an erudite Dave Barry – you can almost predict the ends of some of the sentences. Still, he’s pretty funny and it’s always cool reading about student riots or trying to get on a bus in South Lebanon.

Anyway, I’m headed to Singapore on Sunday and back on Tuesday evening. One more country under my belt, and it’s all on the company dime. Sweet-ass sweet. My passport is going to be mackin’ it by the end of the year, esp if I make it to Costa Rica with Skaggy or Pagalooganugga or hit Ireland (and perhaps Holland) with my sister. Ireland is pretty much a lock, and if we have time we’ll head over to see Holland for a couple days, but who knows what’s up with Costa Rica. Gotta get there before my Lonely Planet book gets all out of date.

Yesterday, while reading the Technology section of the South China Morning Post, I saw articles about two websites that celebrate and incorporate two of humankind’s most valuable inventions ever: the computer and the gun. The first one, http://www.live-shot.com/, allows users to shoot a gun from anywhere. What? Yeah, you log on and somewhere out there, in the West or something, is a ridiculous-looking contraption that includes a gun, a camera, a computer on a table, and a dude who kind of oversees things. You aim and shoot from your desk in Manhattan (or wherever) using your mouse. I shit you not. The guy is there to oversee the final shot, to like clear it or something. I mean, there’s an onion story in there somewhere. How dumb. It’s like making a video game partly real, except you’re not in the cool mountain air, feeling the recoil and the noise and smelling the smoke. You’re sitting in your cubicle. It’s only for target shooting now, but the guy who runs it wants to expand to hunting. What are they going to do, set it up at major deer crossings? I’m sure the deer are really going to be cruising past the guy sitting at the table with the monitor and the gun-camera thingy. Maybe someday they’ll have a robot you can control that walks over and skins the thing for you and maybe drinks a cup of blood like they did in Red Dawn.

The second thing I read about is called www.jfkreloaded.net; that website allows members to play Lee Harvey Oswald. It’s computer-simulation Kennedy assassination software that uses the vast amount of data surrounding that event to re-create Daley Plaza, the motorcade, and the shooting. Dig – you can control, among other things, the crowd sounds, music and radio sounds, the blood effects, and the ‘motorcade behavior’ (Real, Exaggerated, and Chaotic). Since the real event was fairly damn chaotic, I wonder what the Chaotic setting is like. I mean, are there Secret Service dudes humping the bike cops while shooting wildly into the crowd? “It was chaos,I tell you!”

You can view your handiwork from the perspective of Abraham Zapruder, though there are options to change the location of the ‘camera’ through which you see the action as well as the object on which the camera centers. So you can put the camera on the front of the limo and aim right at Jackie’s face to see her expression or something. And, of course, there are trajectory graphs that show where your shots went – you know, “through motorcycle cop #1 and lodged in President’s arm” and little lines on the screen to show that. I have to admit that it’s pretty sick, and it seems like it was more borne of an ability to do something with all this available, meticulous data than of a great public demand to play Kennedy’s alleged killer. I just don’t want to pay for that. Free, sure, maybe once or twice, but why pay? I also think it would be more fun to try to shoot someone in the ass. Maybe hit Zapruder and see what his camera view looks like after a good ass-shot.

I also have to admit that I’m pretty weary of all the conspiracy theories and specials on the History Channel and so on. It seems pretty clear that Oswald didn’t do it from the most basic evidence – namely, that Kennedy is so, so obviously shot from in front and not from behind – but shit, man, there’s so much messed-up lyin’-ass stuff going on these days that I really do not care. The most plausible thing I saw was this one special showing a lot of good evidence that he was shot from this big rain drain on the right side of the street – but I’m so burned out that I don’t care.

Anyway, more later.

Chucky