Deeweedee of the Week: Death On Demand

We got an overwhelming response of five comments on the last Deeweedee of the Week so we decided to do another.  Here it goes:

Title: Death On Demand

Plot Summary: An entrepreneurial college student decides to set up a pay-per-view live webcast of six people spending the night in a haunted house.  Who's haunting it?  I'm glad you asked.  Turns out thirty years earlier, a mountaineer climbing Everest went crazy from a cerebral edema and killed his Sherpa.  After returning home, he brutally murdered his wife and kids using mountaineering equipment, then hung himself from a climbing rope.  The contestants, split into teams of two, must embark on a sort of a scavenger hunt that slowly reveals more details about the grisly night in question and ultimately leads them to the key to the padlocked front door and the cash prize.  One by one they, along with the guys running the show, are picked off by the evil ghost, leading to a thrilling conclusion involving voodoo and mangled corpses.

Actors you may have seen in any other movie: None.

Number of other people in the theater: Four.

Best plot twist: At the last minute, one contestant is switched out for a porn star named Velvet Luv in order to boost ratings.  The entrepreneur promises her a bonus of $100 for every guy she fucks and $200 for every girl.

Number of other people who left during the first lesbian sex scene: Four.

Money racked up by Velvet Luv: $300.

Most awkward reoccuring subplot: The roid rage-filled offensive lineman who struggles with impotence for most of the movie before getting slipped some Viagra and boning Velvet Luv in the bathroom.

Most beat-into-the-ground mountaineering term that the writer used to attempt to add some semblance of authenticity to the movie: Cerebral Edema

Best line spoken by the ghost before killing a girl hand-cuffed to the bed and pinning her to the ceiling with an ice ax: "Where's your base camp?  Why won't you carry my bags!?!"

Number of different mountaineering tools used to murder people: 3 (ice ax, crampon, cam)

Most implausible moment: The last survivor is walking out the front door when the ghost throws a cam through her chest and pulls her back in.  For those of you unfamiliar with rock climbing, this is the wiki page on cams: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring-loaded_camming_device.  They're not particularly... sharp.

Most disappointing realization upon looking the movie up on IMDb: The actress who plays Velvet Luv is not a real porn star.  We were really looking forward to linking you guys to her home page...

Trains to Hong Kong

Seeing as we hadn't updated in a while, we're gonna knock out a few while we've got some momentum.

The weekend before Halloween Sam and I went to an Ultimate tournament in Hong Kong to play with the Shanghai team.  We lost in the Semis, but we won the party, largely thanks to the Berry Twins' outstanding performance as Billy and Jimmy Lee, aka Double Dragon.  We're trying to track down a video for you guys, but there should be pics on facebook already.

Seeing as we're broke, we decided to take the train.  We could have paid $25 for a hard seater, literally just a bench, but we figured it was worth another $25 to get a bed in the hard sleeper section since the trip is noon to noon.  Hard sleeper gets you one of three bunks on top of each other (we always take the top)  with about 75 people or so in one car.  Trains are pretty fun; we generally lie around and read, play cards, do crosswords, etc.  But there are a few interesting parts.  One is the music.  

Highlights included: "We Are Ready," an inspirational song about how ready China is for the Olympics, "Beijing Welcomes You" (self-explanatory), the always classic "First 45 seconds of Baby Got Back looped five times in a row," and let's not forget "Wonderwall and Boulevard of Broken Dreams alternating at 10 second intervals."  We always get annoyed when these tunes start up at 8am, but it wasn't until the return trip that we found out there is a switch controlling it and that people just turn on the music full blast that early in the morning for fun!

Over the course of 24 hours, you get to know the people around you pretty well.  Sometimes this is a good thing, and sometimes it isn't.  On one side of us was a cool dude from Kunming who offered to drive us back from Hong Kong, but on the other side was a Little Emperor.

For those of you who are not familiar, Little Emperors are phenomena resulting from the one-child policy.  Basically, since they only get one shot, some parents spoil the shit out of their kids and turn them into whining, screaming brats who end up getting a rude awakening when they get to University and have to be around other people.  This kid was no exception.  He frequently ran up and down the length of the car, banging on each compartment wall and screaming "LAI LE!" at the top of his lungs.  Approximate translation: "come on!"  At one point his mother came back to their compartment and said "But you're not screaming!  I don't understand, you always scream..." or something to that effect.  Other notable moments include the time he punched his mom really hard in the stomach and a certain interaction with Sam.  Which brings us to:

GUESS WHICH STORY IS TRUE!  (Miniature Version)

Did the Little Emperor

A) Kick Sam in the shin then run away laughing.

B) Stick gum in Sam's book then wave and say "Goodbye!" before running away.

C) Steal Sam's flip-flops and run the length of the car slapping them together.

Place your votes in the Comments section and we'll post the answer in the near future.

Also, for you Paideia people out there, we got to hang out with Liz Sizemore in Hong Kong!  She's working there and we even crashed at her apartment on Sunday night.  It was awesome to see her, it sounds like she's really loving living in China.  She might even come visit us in Kunming!

Probably one more to come in this run of posts...

TOP FIVE: Sweeney Todd Subtitles

Hey there, everybody.

Today we thought we'd share with you, our loyal readers, a delightful experience we recently had involving one of those oh-so-glorious 75 cent dee-wee-dees, specifically, Sweeney Todd. After buying said DVD, returning home, putting it on and settling down on the couch, we noticed, to our annoyance, that there were great big subtitles in Chinese along the bottom of the screen. Not a disaster by any means, as all we had to do was toggle through the subtitle menu until our screen was free of clutter and distractions. We did not reach that point. The first language after Chinese happened to be English, and we just happened to be at the point of the movie when the title, "Sweeney Todd; Demon Barber of Fleet Street", was on the screen. To our delight, right below the title was what we can only deduce was some poor Chinese persons attempt at translating the Chinese subtitles back into English: "name of the movie: barber's pottery be virtuous". So it was that we spent the next hour and a half watching Sweeney Todd with English subtitles, jotting down the funniest and most bizarre translations for your reading enjoyment. A Top Five was nowhere near enough to encompass the level of absurdity of these subtitles, so we've expanded to a Top Twelve. Here they are, in no particular order, with the quote from the English subtitles first, and the actual quote from the movie following:

1. "If return on the hoof, you'll find me out for ability!" - "You might find me if you like"
2. "This is the most London the fruit of the mess parties" - "Worst pies in London"
3. "I am you the tapeworm in the belly, shut up" - "Poppin' pusses into pies"
4. "Which more sexy?" - "People think it's haunted"
5. "I difficult way not the United States" - "There was a barber and his wife, and she was beautiful"
6. "Be like the clown in the poker similar" - "Benjamin Barker"
7. "Lo this how garbage goods" - "What's this? Smells like piss"
8. "Chan the water of the alcohol" - "This is piss, piss with ink"
9. "I be a dithyramb, send a kiss to everyone's a joss-stick" - "I am Pirelli, the king of the barbers, the barber of kings, bongiorno goodday. I send you a kiss"
10. "Don't be nasty first up, rightness small fart Hai" - "His home is right upstairs. You wouldn't mind if I gave you a juicy meat pie, wouldya?"
11. "Kid your stem does the Yao sell dog skin medicated plaster" - "He didn't have your nice head of hair, though"
12. "That go to a prostitute and seek" - "Why don't you wait for your master downstairs?"

There you have it. The subtitles are usually bad, but this one really stepped it to a new level. Feel free to start a discussion/argument on your favorite quotes.

Sam and Jono

TOP FIVE: Signs at our local Police Station

Here it is, gang, the long-awaited second installment of the Top Five.  We have to register with the po-po here, so while we were waiting for forty minutes, we took a gander at the various signs they had posted around.  We tried to take pictures but were quickly yelled at.  We also didn't have time to get the actual Chinese definitions for most of them because they accused us of loitering.  We are going to try and do that for future Top Fives.  Now, on to the list:

#5 - Hard-working Room

#4 - Mediate the Room in Dispute

#3 - Detective's Long Office of Punishment

#2 - The Populace Appraises the Box (from a suggestion box)

#1 - The Public Squadron Punishment Detects the Room

Feel free to comment on entries you think should be higher or lower than they are.  We've taken a suggestion from Nate and are currently working on the first installment of "Guess Which Story is True."  That's all for now.

Jono and Sam

NEW FEATURE: Deeweedee of the Week!

This is an experiment, so I'd appreciate feedback on whether or not people like it.  Basically, we live next door to a movie theater that routinely plays American B-(or C- or D-)movies for about $1.40, so we have taken to attending some showings.  They are all just DVDs that the theater owner bought for $0.40 and he is turning a profit by selling one ticket, but that's okay.  You can sneak beer in with a backpack so it's worth it.  My plan is to write short plot summaries followed by a list of superlatives.  Here goes:

Title: The Hive

Plot Summary: An ant colony on a small island in the Pacific begins to attack and eat humans.  Leading experts are brought in but nobody seems to be able to control the ants.  Several battles ensue, but our hero soon discovers that the ants have actually become conscious.  They can form giant arms and other diverse figures (more on that to come).  They even link together and form a living computer (with each ant acting as a binary transmitter, yes for 1 or no for 0) and try to parlay with the humans.  They want half the island for themselves, and only when that happens will they leave the humans alone.  In the end, the ants all get blown up and the world is safe once again.

Actors you may have seen in any other movie: None.

Other people in the theater: Two.

Worst special effect:  The extermination rays used by the good guys that look a little worse than the ones in Ghostbusters (1984).

Most implausible moment: An ant crawls in a guy's ear and begins biting his neurons to affect his thinking and control him.

Best line spoken by the Prime Minister of the island while slamming his fist vehemently on a table:  "We will not negotiate with ants!"

Worst line trying to establish past love connection between two characters out of the blue: "Heh, I guess we're not backpacking around Europe anymore..."

Best special effect:  The climactic scene of the movie has the main characters fighting a giant ant...

Wait for it...

Made out of ants.

If any of you have a chance to catch this one, I would definitely recommend it.

-Jono and Sam

Sing-gah-poh

First of all, a thousand apologies to all you dedicated readers out there.  We've had hell trying to get internet at our house and getting our shit together to update this thing.  We're gonna write a few entries in the next couple of days and then we hope to get back to a semi-regular schedule.

First, a few funny stories from our trip to Singapore.  First of all, it is a country where chewing gum is illegal and bringing in drugs can get you the death penalty, in case you didn't know.  A good indication of how rigid their society is: they were building a new terminal at their airport for cheap airlines and had a competition to name it, with the first prize being 5000 bucks.  After tough deliberation, they settled on Budget Terminal.  Somebody won money for coming up with that name (credit to Kelly for the story).

There are high Chinese and Indian populations on the island and they don't seem to get along very well.  The first Chinese cab driver we got in Little India said that Indian guys are like animals and to never let a girl walk around alone in that area of town.  They will grope her and molest her and all sorts of good stuff like that.  The next day, we had an Indian cab driver who told us that all the Chinese people care about is money.  'Money, money, money.  A Chinese man will kill you for money,'  he told us excitedly.  Good to see people living together harmoniously...

Also the Singaporean accent might be the silliest English accent on the planet (for a country where it's an official language).  I'll try and find a youtube video with good examples, but the title of this entry is a pretty good approximation of how they say their own nation's name.  Even Kelly agrees.

That's all for now, more updates soon...

TOP FIVE: Wine labels

Allow me to introduce a new running segment that we will feature sporadically at The DeeWeeDee Shop: Top Five. They will usually be translation errors, ranging from peoples' English names to t-shirt labels and store names. The first installment is labels from Yunnan wines that we found in Zhongdian (also known as Shangrila). Without further ado:

#5 - Occasionally drinking this wine is good to your health.

#4 - Snow area beauty naked barley red wine

#3 - Tasting best and delicious production, Elaborate brewing and classical making. The wine was made of best grapes in world, and with internal advanced techics. It is clarity and has full-bodied fruit-smell, vinosity and long aftertaste.

#2 - Constantly drinking this wine is good to your health.

#1 - It is a good wine from heaven and souls. That can read our happiness and sadness, like a bosom friend bringing up warmth. It lets the cheers burst out of our minds.

Olympic Gold

For those of you that were unaware, Chinese media coverage is generally biased, and that is especially true now that the Olympics are on. They weight the coverage towards events that Chinese do well in and the commentary is always completely one-sided. You would never, for example, see Badminton or Women's team Archery on during primetime in the US. Today, though, they reached a new level of absurdity. There are four channels in China that are airing the Olympics. This morning, at one moment, they were showing a THIRD replay of the Women's 10m Air Pistol event, which was won by a Chinese woman, on one channel, a replay of the medal ceremony on a second channel, and an interview with the gold medalist on a third channel. A full 75% of the Olympic coverage at that point in time was dedicated to an event that I had never even heard of until today.

We'll be bringing you more on the Olympics in the coming weeks; it's all pretty ridiculous on this end.

Beep Beep

Sam's stalling a bit on his latest post, so I thought I would put a couple short ones up for all the fans out there. His post will tell about the camping portion of our trip, but this is the harrowing account of our bus ride back from Lugu Lake. It's a fairly mountainous area and the roads are usually slow and windy, and this one was no exception. The constant changing of direction makes reading difficult, at least for me, and my iPod was dead after 18 days on the road, so I mostly entertained myself by staring out the window or straining to catch a bit of Tha Carter III from Sam's headphones.
This was fine for a while, but halfway through the seven hour trip a small box on the dashboard beeped for about five seconds then went off. We debated what it was (possibly a radar detector) but couldn't come to a consensus. It soon started beeping again, this time for longer. The driver looked frustrated and whacked it a couple of times to no avail before hitting a button on the side and stopping the beeping. This only appeared to be a delay switch of some kind, because the noise kept coming back, more and more frequently and for longer periods of time. The driver was content to ignore it for a few minutes, hoping it would go away, but his anger would build to the point where he would hit it again (this never did anything), mash a few other buttons and eventually submit to the only apparent solution: the delay button. This bought us only a minute or two each time. Sam and our friend Seth both had music players to drown out the beeping, and I did my best to ignore it, but a prolonged, high-pitched sound can only be ignored for so long.
After forty minutes or so of this, I went and looked at the box for some sort of power cord that could be unplugged. The driver informed me that it was impossible to unplug or turn off the device. I tried to point out that this was impossible, that anything electronic can be turned off somehow, but he was adamant. My quick investigation seemed to confirm this fact and I'd left my hammer at home, so I resigned myself to my fate. Soon after this, Sam kindly lent me his iPod to help maintain my sanity, and as the soothing bars of "Got Money" drifted to my ears, the beeping promptly stopped. I didn't understand what the driver said when I asked him what it was. I'd like to think that it had no function at all other than to drive me crazy. If so, it was well on its way to accomplishing that goal. By the time the bus stopped for construction 15 minutes later, my ears were still ringing.

The rest of the trip was blissfully beep-free.

One activity, two interpretations

First stop: Dali

For the next week or so we will probably be playing a little bit of catch-up. We just finished one round of summer traveling with friends and there are plenty of stories from the last few weeks that need to be told. Our whole trip was restricted to Yunnan (see right), which, as its residents will proudly tell you, is home to more ethnic minorities than any other province of China.

We are currently living in Kunming, the provincial capital. The first leg of our journey took us west to Dali, a small city where marijuana literally grows on the side of the road. It is home to a certain minority known as Bai and we frequently saw women dressed in their traditional garb. More often than not, they were coming up to us at night and asking us if we wanted to 'smokey smokey' and whether or not we would like some 'hasheesh.' As you may have ascertained, hawkers, be they selling 'deeweedees' or illegal substances, often learn one or two key English phrases and shout them on end at anyone who looks remotely Western.

We passed up these tempting offers and found our way to a certain expat bar that is famous for selling joints along with drinks and hookahs. Once upstairs, we saw one of the employees being tattooed in a traditional Chinese method; it entails painstakingly filling in one dot at a time by hammering sharpened, ink-dipped bamboo sticks into the skin. During a break, he began talking quickly and excitedly with us and it soon dawned on everyone that he was undergoing this torturous procedure while heavily under the influence of a certain stimulant that shares its name with a refreshing caffeinated beverage that you can find in your local convenience store. It seemed to me that this would only make him focus on the pain more rather than steady his nerves, but to each his own. He soon pulled out a spliff and added to the delicious mix of drugs in his body before getting back to work. His outbursts and expletives assured us that it was no walk in the park. Several beers and a couple of hookahs later, he had not made much progress. By our calculations he still had seven or eight hours to go by the time we left.

Ouch.

Welcome

Hey everybody, just wanted to write a quick introduction to the blog that we will be writing during our stay in China. Some of you may be wondering what the deal with the name is, while others are probably grinning and saying 'looka looka' to themselves. The title comes from a saying that you will hear everywhere across this great country. Go to any DVD market and you will soon have people running up to you screaming 'looka looka, dee wee dee' and trying to drag you into their stall. My personal favorite was in Shanghai when a guy brandishing a catalogue sidled up to us, darted his eyes back and forth, and covertly whispered, 'dee wee dee, hat, bag, watch. . . hello.'

We think this title adequately sums up what we want this blog to contain: ridiculous and hopefully entertaining stories from China that will give the people back home an idea of what it's like to live in this crazy, constantly changing place. As this is our first foray into the blogosphere (a word we will never use again), we encourage you to leave us feedback, comments, and questions. More posts soon to come (and in the future we will be writing under separate names).

-Jono and Sam