Do They Still Draw Cartoons?

"Legends tell of a legendary warrior, whose kung fu skills were the stuff of legend...!"

So goes the opening narrative for Dreamworks' latest offering, Kung Fu Panda. If I could raise an eyebrow, I would. However, it took several viewings before I got it; I secured a bootleg copy because I couldn't wait for the original. And this was after watching it at a cinema. Despite a few iCringe moments, it's just brimming with Fun™. What the hell was Zhao Bandi complaining about? The panda isn't even copyrighted by China.

And I swear, they're getting more and more quotable. A far cry from Yogi Bear's word-mangling and bad grammar, "zoiks", "jinkies" and "Heavens to Murgatroid!" Chalk it up to the scriptwriters. "Cartoons" ain't just for kids any more.

"He was so deadly, in fact, that his enemies would go blind from overexposure to pure awesomeness!"

Animated features have come a long way. I grew up watching the 2-D ones, admiring the artwork and the lengths they went to in making them. Then came the digital age, and the advent of not-so-cartoonish cartoons. However, the day when 2-D went 3-D was probably when Who Framed Roger Rabbit was released. Since then, PC processors got faster, hardware more sophisticated. Have you seen today's graphic cards? They look like miniature motherboards - complete with their own processors and cooling fans. Some cards run so hot they need their equivalent of a radiator.

But I wouldn't pack cel animation to the nearest retirement home just yet. The Japs are still at it, even though more and more of cel-CGI marriages are happening (Ghost In The Shell, Appleseed, Vandread, Vexille, etc). With so much history behind cel, it should be preserved as a heritage in case it is eclipsed by newer animation techniques. Hell, it might even be taught as an esoteric skill one day, like the erhu or didgeridoo.

"One often meets his destiny on the road he takes to avoid it."

But I'm also thinking: With Moore's Law running rampant like a flock of rabid Road Runners, it won't be long before anybody could make their own animated features on devices as small as a cellphone. Will we be networking using our own custom-made CGI avatars someday? To the point where we won't have to leave our chairs? The producers of WALL-E think so.

Great. Not only are they packing cinemas and driving CPU evolution, but predicting the future as well.

"There's no charge for awesomeness - or attractiveness."

I still think they put that into Jack Black's mouth just to rub it into our noses.

"There are no accidents."

Brought To You By Canon®

Sometimes I wonder why I started this in the first place.

With the exception of a few bad Photoshopped graphics, Bites has been mainly text. But I just can't be assed to update nowadays - at least, if I don't have anything substantial to write about.

I've sneered at blogs that are mostly pictures because, well, their photographs usually sucked. And they don't bother to shrink them to the proper dimensions and file size. But with so many now incorporating videos I feel like a Johnny-come-lately in the media explosion craze.

Pretty soon, they say, video will be the norm.

These photos (borked now due to file hosting hiccups) were taken during the last Readings at Seksan, but I could write little about it that hasn't been written before. Sharon Bakar does a good job of chronicling each session she attends. I didn't take any pictures of the Wayang Buku performance because there was too much movement - from the act and my shaky hands.

Dr Shih the historian talked about how the town of Sitiawan in Perak got its name, and shared some tidbits about Sitiawan-born persona non grata Chin Peng. Why is it often the spoiled rich kids who find their life's purpose by sponsoring anarchy?

He had approached me first and introduced himself. He's never attended a reading before. But once he started, it was smooth sailing. Reading is a lot like storytelling, after all.

The wine bottle-uncorking antics of Shahril and I were applauded by an appreciative audience which included Robert Raymer, an American expat who's living in Sarawak and author of Lovers and Strangers Revisited. Turns out he lectured Funnybunny when she was studying English. Much has been said about his writing and generosity.

Nic Wong's first foray into the big big world was to grow big big hair - and lots of it. We are grateful he decided to lop it all off for us before reading here. His art is growing (no pun intended - maybe) from strength to strength; let's just hope it doesn't come with (too many) eccentricities. Poets. You know how they are.

Speaking of which...

Was Sheena Baharudin on the readers' list? I think so (too lazy to check). She apparently came with a few comrades from Poetry Underground to cheer Nic and Kat. She only read one poem about racial discrimination. Has she been mistaken for an Indian before?

She obligingly posed when Sharon whipped out the digicam. It happened so quickly I couldn't catch it.

Soon-to-Be-Dr Jason Leong, author of the funny and honest Twisted Stethoscope, who almost couldn't make it. He had another reading to do at the Mid Valley Megamall. Looking closely, he sort of resembles my former managing director (also abbreviated, interestingly enough, as MD).

Don't you just want to pinch those cheeks?

When I first met Kathleen Choo, I had little idea of just how feisty she was, or how well she carries of her "slams". A suggested second career and a rap lyricist was politely brushed off. Are "all the great poets are male, white and dead"?

Bond Lives... Again

"Bond lives... again",
Off The Edge, August 2008

Besides the usual press kits, invites and all, there were books, books and more books. This was my first book review piece for the magazine - that much-hyped post-Fleming Bond novel, Devil May Care.

I thought it would be easy, until I got stumped by the additional requirements. Number of Bond books sold, or annual total sales; value of the Bond franchise, and all that. I was swamped with whatever I had found - how was I going to work it all in?

Then one midnight, nearly all of the pieces just fell into place. Two hours later, a serviceable piece that didn't need a lot of edits. I was beginning to feel that book reviews will always be the brightest feather in my cap - next to restaurant reviews.

Apologies for the poor image quality. I'm still struggling with balancing (image) beauty, bytes and bandwidth.

Inkvestment, Ping Pong

Every now and then, we would get press kits and e-mails from various advertisers about their products. It's nothing new, but one wonders just how fast some of these items would go, with or without our help.

Consumer Price Index: "Inkvestment" (left), and "Ping Pong",
Off The Edge, August 2008

My eyes bulged at the figures for the above items. RM18,000 for a ping-pong table and accessories? A RM36,000 fountain pen? I would later learn that not only are the prices justified (in most cases), but there are people who can more than afford these things, and that it's more than just the brand.

But the nature of the magazine is such that it's not just item, price, and where-to-find, but the whats and whys as well: why is it so expensive, what goes into the product, sales pitch and packaging, etc. I haven't seen a lot of publications that do that. I've never looked at "luxury items" the same way again.

Artistic Bodacity

Typing this on my new laptop. Feels strangely liberating, even if the keyboard's layout feels awkward. Can't wait to take it on tour, doing the rolling meditation stuff. Moleskines are so last millennium.

This month's Readings is a bit of a departure, even though it feels like the ship already left the port last month. We had an American expat, a historian, three poets and a medical student, plus a musician and stage actor for after-reading entertainment.

It started with a bit of deja vu involving liquor bottles. Unaware the corkscrews had extensions for leverage, Shahril Nizam and I tugged and tugged and tugged till our faces turned red (not just from the exertion). Sharon had to call in an expert, otherwise we couldn't proceed. And MPH's Tan May Lee (may have) photographed the sideshow.

Oh well, at least it was entertaining.

I'll admit that one main reason why I dropped by was to touch base with Kathleen Choo, whom I last saw at a mutual friend's book launch in 2006. Besides being floored by her poetry slammin', I got a chance to see her smaller-than-notebook notebook PC. Does the speed of technological evolution bring to mind malevolent biological agents from a sci-fi horror script?

Nicholas Wong returns! This was the young poet whose presence at a previous Readings was the condition for a veteran's participation - such is his reputation. Nic channeled Pixar by titling one of his pieces "Oogway" [sic], on top of reading a poem he composed (four pages long!) just two hours before.

With some history by Dr Shih, performances by Kathleen, Sheena Baharudin, Nic and the Wayang Buku (Book Theatre) guys, a bit of comedy writing by a doctor-in-waiting, the July Readings just reverberates with sheer awesomeness.

Another deviation in the usual proceedings is an announcement by some Arab dude (by his own admission) about a reading project. Zain also suggested spreading word about the project via the Internet because "Malaysia has a huge blogging community". Don't believe him? Believe Blogger then; it just announced the availability of the Malay interface because, "...Blogger has a large base of users in Malaysia".

Large number of bloggers, yes. Large number of good bloggers? Well... heh.

The Secret Of The Secret Lies In The Secret - Not

From "stealing secrets" to "no secret". Honestly... .

Anyway, my point is that the secret to The Secret is really no secret at all. The Secret rebrands and emphasises the power of positive thinking, and says that's all anyone needs. What kind of secret is that? And then these guys come in and say The Secret is not the secret everyone's looking for, but there is a secret, and that's the secret they've got and knew all along. They also claim that The Secret secretly subverts its adherents into going against their secret, while promoting laziness and wishful thinking. So the only way out is to embrace their secret, a beautiful mystery that's not really secretive at all - just mysterious.

In Kung Fu Panda, the secret is not really a secret at all, either.

---

No secret here

first published in The Star, 18 July 2008


Blissfully drowning in my sorrows for the past year or so, I was unaware of the phenomenon that is The Secret. At one glimpse of the cover, my tired mind registered, "Not another novel..." It wasn't until I got my hands on another book that I found out I was totally wrong.

Through The Secret (originally a film, which was then developed into a book), Aussie TV writer and producer Rhonda Byrne explores the New Age concept called the Law of Attraction, which says that people can control their lives by the power of their own thoughts and emotions - in short: think (hard), and you will receive.

Wow, and all this time I called it "wishful thinking". What The Secret claims, however, is that it works. It's no wonder then that certain quarters are behaving like hungry lions watching a zebra herd. Just as with The DaVinci Code, numerous detractors published works countering The Secret. One of these is The Secret Revealed.

Had I taken a much closer look at the cover, I probably would have given it a miss and spared myself some pain. Why, you ask? Previously, James L. Garlow (who's also a pastor) had written another book, Cracking Da Vinci's Code. I remember the firestorm surrounding that one - the Jesus/Mary Magdalene hoo-ha that so terrified the Vatican and devout Christians everywhere that some form of rebuttal had to be made or the religion would collapse (The DaVinci Code is still listed under "Fiction", by the way).

Fearing a similar crisis of faith following the release of The Secret, the pastor once again whipped out his crusading pen. Predictably, the authors hit the ground running, underlining the fact that Bible passages are used to sell The Secret's glaringly un-Christian concepts. The preaching slowly intensifies from there until the end of the book, where it is implied that there is no secret at all - it's about "beautiful mysteries", and its source is God.

While they admit that there may have been good intentions involved, the authors of The Secret Revealed make no secret of their scorn for Byrne and others who aggressively promote The Secret. They say the Law of Attraction blames the victims for all their woes, while at the same time, appealing to the get-what-you-want-now mindset of the selfish, greedy and lazy.

They also pan the "deliberate" omissions of concepts like God and sin, and the notion that anybody can "will" whatever they want into being is practically blasphemous. They stress the futility of "transmitting your thoughts towards the Universe", when you could direct them to God instead (personally, I don't see the difference).

Sometimes the authors come off as snide, condescending even, when presenting scenarios where the Law of Attraction fails, as well as in the accompanying arguments.

Of course, they do point out that it's not all bad. They applaud Byrne's exhortations to do good and bring joy to others. They just don't like how she's telling people to go about it.

The Secret Revealed puts forth valid points against swallowing any hype in its entirety, but the Christian-leaning slant in the arguments were a big put-off, as is the assumption that without any help, devout followers of The Secret are like lemmings who will eventually march off a cliff towards certain doom (they don't say you're going to Hell if you follow The Secret, just that you might be headed for "trouble").

While flipping the pages I have to remind myself a few times that history is full of stories about weirdo farms and their shepherds, like Jim Jones of the People's Temple, and David Koresh's gun-toting Branch Davidians, so I guess some of the authors' fears are justified. Still, being inadvertently accused of wilful stupidity not only gets my goat, but the whole farm as well.

I won't doubt that The Secret Revealed does in fact fill in the blanks, but not all of them, and certainly not in the way that I would find comfortable. A more secular point of view would have been more convincing, and less cringe-worthy to my psyche.

Yes, my aversion to religious preaching did taint this review. No, I will offer no apologies for that. I will give some praise to the good pastor and his buddy for their efforts, with a gentle reminder that back then, as now, too much honesty is not always a good thing.

---

The Secret Revealed

Exposing the Truth About the Law of Attraction

James L. Garlow and Rick Marschall
FaithWords
282 pages
Non-Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-446-19796-0

I Has Mobile Computing - Kind Of

OK, I'm the owner of a Dell Vostro 1310 laptop. Sister #2, who's now with Dell, helped me get one. And because the folks thought it'd be a great birthday present, they footed the bill - and the sister piled on the bells and whistles. I'm embarrassed by the attention, and more than a bit ashamed.

And why don't I feel like a laptop owner?

I'll admit, I wanted this piece of technology so I can do stuff on the road. Demands of the new job and all that. But it's a constant struggle keeping the thing safe; I get apprehensive during lunch breaks. Preventing it from getting wet. Keeping an eye on it when it follows me to restaurants. And because I have two bags to carry now, I feel like Houdini when I lock and unlock the doors.

I tell you - it's like having a wife. But at least a wife can take care of herself when I'm not around, and open the doors when my arms are full of shopping bags.

Adjustments are painful.