December 4th, 2007
Kozo’s Shopping Cart of Crap
This is a special edition of Kozo’s Shopping Cart of Crap, because this one takes place in a foreign country. Sort of. Let’s explain.
In case you’ve never heard of the fabulous history of LoveHKFilm.com, here’s the short version. Once upon a time, I lived in the amazing United States of America, a place I opted to leave when 1) I was offered a job at YesAsia.com in Hong Kong, and 2) George Bush was reelected President of the United States. That second reason had less to do with Dubya’s presidency - which Fox News tells me has been a kick-ass seven years - and more about getting perspective. Basically, I wanted to know what it felt like to look at the United States from the outside. Would I appreciate the country more? Would I appreciate it less? Would I tear up my NRA membership card and go green? And would I swear off McDonald’s, lose that fry fat, and become completely unrecognizable to my relatives?
Flash-forward to three years later and the answers to the above are either unknown or confidential, though I will gladly answer the last one. I now visit McDonald’s maybe twice a month, I did lose some of the fry fat, and I now look somewhat different. In fact, the flight attendant who accepted my boarding pass looked at me, then looked at my passport picture, then looked back at me and said, “Wow Mr. Chen, you’ve lost a lot of weight.”
The moral: moving to another country can help you lose weight. Please pay me HK$888 for the tip, and sorry I couldn’t hire Myolie Wu to push my slimming advice. Here’s a photo of her anyway:
Losing weight will turn you into an Angel
But this has nothing to do with America or Hong Kong film, so I’ll fix that right now by segueing into the Kozo’s Shopping Cart of Crap feature. Normally I’d use this opportunity to hawk DVDs at YesAsia.com because nobody else online does. Okay, that’s not true, but LoveHKFilm.com seldom pushes products, and actually telling people when DVDs get released can be useful. Also, YesAsia.com’s marketing department has suggested that I do it, and to be honest, it’s not such a bad idea because it can help people navigate YesAsia.com’s ten million products and sixty different product lines to identify what might interest them.
But that’s another problem, because I have no idea what interests the people who read this site. Besides, running this site according to the interests of others has never been my strong point. If that were the case, I would probably have made the common decision of watching only movies with Donnie Yen and Stephen Chow, or simply dropping Hong Kong and going with Korea because it’s more “in” with the kids. Basically, I watch what nobody cares about, and I do a damn good job of keeping up with it. Do I do a good job of writing about it? That’s all in the eye of the beholder, but some leet dudes have made it known that they don’t approve of me or my writing style. My response to these people is that I will gladly refund their LoveHKFilm.com membership fee.
But anyway, plugging hot products is not my thing, so I’ve decided to use Kozo’s Shopping Cart of Crap to talk about what I really, truly buy, thereby revealing to people that 1) I do spend money on entertainment products; 2) I don’t download like 60% of the people who drop by this site; 3) I will frequently buy what I review after seeing it in the theater, essentially double-dipping; and 4) I buy what I’ve panned before, or stuff that nobody really cares about. Yep, I admit that I buy crap - and, as anyone who’s taken a 12-step program knows, admitting that you have a problem is the first step towards recovery. If only I could do the same for my fixation with running this website.
So Kozo’s Shopping Cart of Crap is about what products I actually buy, and this Special Edition exists because unlike my usual Hong Kong (or YesAsia.com) based buying patterns, I did my shopping in Chinatown, San Francisco. Also, the United States is now a foreign country to me because I now live in Hong Kong, hence the incredible digression where I rambled on and on about the history of this site and how I ended up in Hong Kong. There, it all ties together now - not that this explanation necessarily improves the quality of the writing.
Phew…that’s a massive intro. So massive in fact that I’ll curtail this right now and actually talk about what I bought later. Besides, the Verbosity Police are not happy.
“Keep those blog entries short, kids!”
December 5th, 2007 at 4:18 am
Wait, I read the whole thing. Where are the products?
And since you work for YesAsia, don’t you get review copies or promos?
It’s like when I worked in 3 record stores in college. I didn’t do it out of love entirely; I did it to get promos and free tickets. And I usually did.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:44 am
I’ll write about the actual products I picked up in the next blog entry, which god willing will happen within the next day or two. I actually started, but once again the entry was getting too verbose. I have to figure out how to stop that.
When it comes to feeding the ‘ol DVD addiction, the best thing I get from YesAsia.com is a staff discount, which actually isn’t all that much since I live in Hong Kong and stuff is cheap in the shops, too. And I actually pay to see all my Hong Kong movies in the theater, including stuff like Beauty and the 7 Beasts and Love is Not All Around. It’s a wonder I haven’t gone completely insane yet.
December 5th, 2007 at 11:06 am
How verbose is verbose, Kozo? I too read till the end, waiting for product info–and then nothing. I’m waiting for your reviews when you get back. You “have to figure out how to stop” verbosity? Well, there’s something called “editing”. Or an “editor”. I volunteer.
December 6th, 2007 at 11:28 am
Not including the products was my fault. Basically I kept typing and typing and decided to wrap it up because lunch hour at work was ending. I was rambling because that’s what happens when I attempt to write anything that isn’t a review. Not that the reviews I write are concise either, because they’re not.
I have long considered an editor for the site, but until I can devote my full attention to the site (which I can’t at the moment), I probably shouldn’t get one. Basically, it’d just be another layer between writing and publishing, and considering that I steal time to write for the site (at lunches, before bed, after work hours end, etc.), it would then take longer for content to appear.
Thanks for the offer to edit, Gabriel. Do you have any experience with editing? If you’d like to talk further, contact me at my LoveHKFilm.com email.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:57 am
I’m a writer, of 1 unproduced screenplay (so far) & a novel in the works. Nah, I was kidding about the editor/editing thing. Your blogs aren’t that verbose though your reviews could do with a spot of trimming. Whether I’m the right person for a pruning job is questionable.