OK,  sorry for the delays in posting these up... my photos from last Sunday's alivenotdead.com anniversary party:

As i mentioned in my teaser blog,  we got there several hours early to set up.  Once we got the sign boards set up and the sound system was ready,  the artists who were going to perform came by to do some sound checks:

Oh snap,  private performance!

Meanwhile on the other side, the food preparations were in full swing:

Master Chef Dan Segall - it was amazing to see what he could do w/ just a little bit of equipment and a few $$$...


It looked good and tasted even better! :-O


By 8 the press was set up and the sign board started going... 


24 Herbs!


We were really fortunate to have Miss Sato Hiroko join us all the way from Japan.   It was her first PR event in Hong Kong.  I don't think she quite understood the whole board + autograph + photo OP thing at first...



luckily Hiro-kun was there to help explain it in Japanese...



of course the big draw was the four 'Alive' guys reunited (actually a relatively rare occurrence considering their schedules these days!)


oh yes, Andrew dusted off his ALIVE shirt from the back of his closet! :-P


Marsha got a lot of attention w/ her low-cut back dress...  you'll notice  almost all the press articles include a photo...

anyone know the lady on the right?


Oh yes, recovering quite well from her broken bones,  Miss Yung Yung Yu came to support!
(and to take a lot of photos...)


Meanwhile the TV guys insisted on starting their interviews w/ the Alive guys, so everything was on hold for a few minutes and most of the camera people relocated:

in case you haven't seen them yet,  Mandy put two of the TV reports on youtube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLUFxHVOVc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLbREQIq7Mk

Then we started the official festivities... first the four of them did a short intro to explain to the press exactly what AnD was, since most of them really hadn't weren't up to speed on the new site:

Really good turnout of the press!

Then we showed our 'retrospective' slideshow showing some of the last year's worth of AnD events...

Then it was time for the 'Birthday'...

Adrian from Audiotraffic came out to sing... 


a scary big pyrotechnic was placed in the cake...

Here's a video we did of the whole event (in case you haven't seen it yet):

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPiVqShYrQ0

yes, everyone wanted to take a picture with it:



of course more coming!

Rave Fever!

Wow,  what a find! I picked this one up in April in the discount section at a DVD store in Mongkok.  The VCD version was only like HK$10,  thats like US$1.25.  The reason I got it wasn't the price though, it was the fact that it featured none other than our own Terence Yin in one of his early film roles.   It also features Sam Lee and .... and came out in '99 i think.

When I watched it the other day I was expecting a typical low-budget Hong Kong movie trying to cash in on the rave party scene of the late 90s.  Given the cast I was expecting it to be some kind of young 'gen-x' love triangle type of cliched story...    The film even starts out that way too,  normal every day suit and tie office worker guy gets mixed up with wild rave party people and falls for nympho party girl...

But I was really blown away with the fact that the film is so much more than just that...  after the first 20-30 minutes it quickly evolves into a bit of a mystery... A girl is trying to help a guy who's girlfriend has apparently gone missing try to track down what happened to her...  is she in hiding? did she run off to another country? die? get murdered?  well I don't want to give it away, you'll have to watch to find out.

The film has some 'non-linear storytelling' which is similar to 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Go',  where slightly confusing scenes are explained eventually through the course of the film through reshowing scenes from alternate perspectives, etc.  It still ends up a bit confusing, but entertaining none the less.

The biggest compliment for this film though is the fact that right up to the end you don't actually know how its going to end.  How often can you really say that about a movie?  usually one way or another you know well before the end of a film how it'll end up... but this one had a pretty good twist and kept me stumped right til the end.

I'll give it a 7/10 (especially taken in context with this type of movie released at that time).

And since I used an embarrassing screen grab of Andrew in my '2000 AD' review,  here's one of Terence:

No blog last night or today...

Yesterday i  started getting a sore throat and feeling a bit feverish,  last night it got a lot worse and i suffered through the night w/ a runny nose and the chills...

its better now (the next afternoon), mostly because i once i finally got to sleep for real (about 3am) i was out of it almost all morning.

i've gotta try to work from home and also do some errands today (like get Three to finally fix my phone!?) 

i'm supposed to fly back to the US tomorrow night,  hopefully they won't kick me out of the country for having SARS... :-P

just got home... its almost 6am!

I was downtown visiting the set of a film currently in production.  it was really cool! 

I decided to take a taxi home instead of taking a bus like normal, since i didn't want to have to wait for it to come and have to walk home from the bus stop...

I went to the spot where the 'cross harbor' taxis normally park and told the driver i wanted to go to kowloon.  if you take a regular taxi across the harbor you have to pay double the toll (so the driver can go back across after they drop you off...) -- a 'cross harbor taxi' (whether in an official spot or not, don't charge double the toll.

As i got into this taxi, i noticed the guy didn't have the 'out of order' sign the  cross harbor taxis usually display if they are not in an official spot....    so I tried to ask him whether or not he was a cross harbor one.... he was pretty old and  didn't speak english --  but wasn't going to wait to figure out what i was trying to ask him... he already started the meter and started driving down the block before I figured out how to ask him in mandarin how much i had to pay for the toll (luckily he was stopped at the first red light on the corner).

He answered in Chinese "it's $20" (which is double), so I realized he wasn't the right kind of taxi and i told him "sorry, I'm getting out."  he tried to say i couldn't but i didn't wait for his permission!  I got out and started walking back up the street to one of the cross harbor taxis (he was originally parked behind them, now we were a few car lengths ahead of them).

he opened the door and started yelling about me owing him the $16 base fare...  but i waved "no way!" to him and walked off -- he literally had driven 50' or less.  So I jumped into the next taxi and we started driving. 

Of course when the original driver saw I was in the taxi he started yelling as we drove by!  i thought "oh ok, whatever...'"

but I was really surprised when like two blocks down the street, he pulled up along next to us and was shouting and honking his horn!  We were going like 30-40 mph all the while.  He was shouting that I owed him money cause he started the meter!   I rolled down the window and started yelling back at him,  it was hilarious!  

Our 40 mph car-to-car conversation (shouting match) went something like this:

him: "hey! you owe me $16!"

me: "where did you take me? you only drove me two meters! I'm not going to pay!"

him: "$^&@%!"  


Thank god the driver of the taxi  I was in just started laughing and kept driving...  I apologized to him for the trouble and tried to explain to him how the guy started driving w/o waiting to figure out what I was trying to ask him.   When he dropped me off he was like "next time be careful, those old guys get very angry!"

ok bed time. another busy day tomorrow.  i've got a bunch of anniversary party pictures uploaded, i'll put them public tomorrow, i promise. ;-)

hey, what the hell, its been 6 hours since it went public and zero comments! :-(

it took so much work to get all these videos together!

alivenotdead.com artists anniversary  video! |alivenotdead.com一周年慶祝

Unfortunately we couldn't get everyone -  but it was awesome to get Daniel, Kelly, James Kyson Lee (Ando!), Van Ness, Andrew, Terence, Conroy, Lisa, Josie, 24 Herbs, Mavis, 2R, and literally dozens and dozens of artists from around the world to contribute.


Please take a look and leave some comments!


ALSO if you can do me a favor, please also click on the videos on youtube and RATE and 'FAVORITE' both of them -- this will help more people find them via youtube! -


ok, time for bed!  Don't worry Jezzjunk, the user one will come soon!