The Rantings of Larry W. Hui

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Oddly one of the more infamous videos, I think it’s aged poorly. Setup was some charades-like game at Metamorphosis (retreat). Recorded by Jimmy, turned into a deep political commentary on gay marriage by me.

Actually the “script” seems fairly hokey to me now and really the only things I still like about the video are the people being all jubilant (because we won the game or something) and my clever use of the jet engine sound during the speed changes. Other than that, if it were today I’d scrap the whole thing and get some extra sleep.

(in fact nowadays I scrap most of my projects and get some extra sleep)

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The second of the videos, we had this real Christmas tree sitting in our apartment, slowly rotting and leaving needles everywhere. Smelled great but that’s about it. To get the tree in, we dragged it through the normal way. On the way out it’d be a mess since all the needles would pull off.

(side note, after the video I tried to vacuum the remaining needles up. Big mistake.)

The actual video. The use of Blur’s Song 2 remains solid. Can’t think of anything better but maybe it’s out there. Counting Crows remains the perfect choice for the second segment, and I still love the nah nah nah as the credits start rolling. The 3 screens of text could use some tweaking, I think the last frame isn’t even grammatically correct.

The shaky cam Wonder Years feel, it wasn’t actually intentional but worked for the most part.

Also note that the whole time Jimmy was dragging the tree and I was just filming him like the lazy sack I am. But hey, that’s college.

Was in a productive mood, so finally got the old videos out. Will be posting them slowly over the course of the week or so. With more commentary, of course.

Overall Background: it was senior year of college (2003) and I got a camcorder. With a lot of time on my hands I decided to make some short films in Adobe Premiere. Also due to space limitations of the students.uiuc.edu domain, the videos had to be around 1 minute. Keep in mind this was before youtube, so it was like discovering fire for the first time. Of course, my old page was a blog before there were blogs, so maybe it was like discovering a bread slicing fire wheel.

Actually in rewatching the videos, they are definitely the work of a younger man. At the time I remember tweaking little aspects of the thing, rendering it (took 15 minutes or so), then repeating until it was perfect. Now I watch it and the bulk of the work is right, but a lot of the minor things (words, humor) hasn’t aged quite as well. Just goes to show, regardless of what your age is, you’ll always think you’re right until you have hindsight. Anyway, keep that in mind when you watch.

The Music Moves Vince is a life changing video experience. People sit down to watch it, then 1 minute and 13 seconds later, they emerge with a new appreciation for life. Actually the whole thing was a random event where people busted out their guitar and violins and started playing Canon. I have no idea why. I’m not positive, but I would bet that Vince was wearing his red Adidas shorts.

From a technical standpoint, the lighting is terrible.

here it is, for some reason it won’t embed.

Got back from the “bachelor party” Tuesday. It was a rip roaring rampage of a road trip to Toronto, Niagara Falls, Buffalo (sort of), and Toledo, Ohio (not really). Perhaps trying to recapture the glory of the legendary (but co-ed) college spring break trip of Cle/Det/Tor, seven grown men packed into a well equipped Honda Odyssey. Only six came back. I’m not kidding.

A brief word about vans. For the original trip, I had a large debate with Jessie. I wanted to keep the people together in a single (Yee owned) van, dubbed the “party van”, and she wanted to split up in cars, or what I called a “lame caravan”. When the dust settled I won and the rest is history. On this trip there was also a small debate (consisting of 2 total emails, about par for all the planning of this event), but once again communal driving prevailed (this time in a Kim owned van). It is encouraging that in a world where I’m often wrong (preparing for marriage), the concept of keeping people together is still the most economical and awesomest way to travel. Seriously a van (particularly a loaded one) is a great way to travel assuming your driver doesn’t fall asleep (keep those arms crossed), the energy of people packed in for several hours is unique and unmatched.

As for the rest of the trip, there were fireworks (literal and figurative), good eating, and of course some good reminiscing of the old days, when things were as simple as if you should go to class or Wonderdogs. Also quite nice, the budget for the whole thing was mostly pleasing, I’m not sure what the total was but divided among 7 should hit a pretty sweet spot. Considering the early plan was to go to Vegas (slightly overdone, and we’re not really hardcore enough for that city), I think we made out quite well. Really just another great call by me.

So, to sum up, great trip that made me miss the college days. College was perhaps the perfect storm of strange characters and personalities, so much so that I wonder if other people have the same experience I did. The trip made me wonder exactly how it came to be that I have such strange screwball friends. Maybe my personality invites such oddities (a strong possibility), or maybe I am incredibly cursed/blessed. Either way, what a strange long trip.

Whilst listening to the soundtrack of Avenue Q, I mused to Tiffany, why is the term “Orientals” offensive?

To which no solid answer was given, other than oriental refers to objects. This sounds rather made up to me, much like the difference between hanged and hung.

Being the curious fellow I am, I went searching for answers and ended up at wikipedia. Again nothing solid was given, but I did learn something new. The oriental vs asian distinction is only an American problem. Canada, always slightly behind, is moving towards making the term oriental offensive.

The UK, or in this case, the originators of our language, is another story completely. Asian refers to the India region, and Oriental refers to anyone good at math (with no negative connotation).

I of course don’t really care, though I do find older people are most likely to use the term oriental (including my dad). Maybe I will make a shirt. It will be yellow and have the words “oriental is the new colored”. I would never wear this shirt in public but it would be nice to have.

Back to Avenue Q. Had high comedic expectations for this and was disappointed. It was good, but there’s just so many little flaws that I couldn’t love it. The premise: puppets (and humans) address their post-college malaise problems Sesame Street style. Problems with show:

1. It doesn’t feel like a Broadway show. There are not many Broadway shows focused on comedy, and maybe there’s a reason for that. When people pay 50-75 bucks for a seat, they usually don’t want to just laugh, they want to be inspired. Also, the show has an odd overstacking of puppeteers, with 4 puppeteers responsible for ~8 puppets. 2 pairs of puppets are voiced by the same puppeteer, so there’s some confusing who’s saying what times. This is a Broadway show, why not pay for a few more puppeteers?

2.  Second act is flat. Sadly the way Avenue Q is like a Broadway show is it sets up problems (Act I) and then tries to resolve everything by dragging it out in song (Act II). The overall charm of AQ (I call it that now) is when the characters are working together and singing about problems, etc. Act I is a delightful romp, but Act II the characters are all over the place and mostly not on stage at the same time. It’s like being in a desert and crawling towards the oasis of everyone get back together and sing. Also, the greatest characters in Broadway history, the Bad Idea Bears, light up the first act then pretty much disappear for the second.

3. Song chemisty is not found. Most of the songs individually are good songs, but they don’t really sum up to anything great. It’s like they made a list of topics they wanted to talk about and wrote a song about each one, then came up with a plot to shoehorn in there. Even the soundtrack sounds more like a “Best of” album as opposed to an actual album.

4. (minor) Not racy enough? AQ toes the line of appropriateness, but maybe they should have just crushed it instead. You’re showing puppets having sex, so you’re half way there already. The old Chappelle’s show has a skit with puppets singing about drugs and STDs. I actually didn’t find it that funny but who knows, base a whole show on that and blend in some other things and you have more profit.

That said the show was entertaining, but in a pop culture kind of way. If that’s what they were going for, then job well done. It’s no Jersey Boys though.