12/16/02            Saw Stomp! at Warner Village

 

 

 

L to R:  Ernest, Brian, Ben, Pingya, Bill, Ginger. 

 

            Ginger successfully amassed a random group of people we knew from MTC, Fulbright, and Oriented to go see Stomp!.  It was playing at the World Trade Center near Warner Village.  I MRT’ed it there and walked, not knowing where to go.  The City Hall stop is a desolate wasteland.  The story is that they modeled the area after America, with wide streets and buildings set far apart.  Part of the Warner Village mall is called New York New York and has a mini Statue of Liberty outside.  Warner (or “Wah-NAH”) is all pretty new, put up in the last few years so it wasn’t here when I was at Love Boat.

 

Anyway, from the MRT you have to walk a long ways through a sketchy dead zone to get anywhere, even City Hall.  At least you can see Warner’s lights from afar.  But I had no idea what WTC looked like and had to ask people multiple times along the way.  It appeared there were several buildings named WTC or something similar, all with different numbers, no one had heard of Stomp, I didn’t know how to say it in Chinese, and finally exasperated I took a cab while on the phone with Bill who got there first and instructed me the exact Chinese name I was to ask for, albeit with a few missing characters that he couldn’t read.  Fortunately the cabbie understood and I got there, last. 

 

            We had OK seats considering Gin just got the tix a couple days ago, but noticed there were still a lot of empty ones further up.  An usher stood near them the whole time so we were too chicken to grab them right away.  I saw Brad move up about halfway through; Bill and I followed suit in time for the grand finale.  All in all, it was quite good and entertaining; pretty much what I expected—really amazing and creative, leaving you wondering how someone came up with the ideas to use all those things and how you would even start to compose a “song” using the coordinated movements of so many people.  It was good to see that one of the best guys was an Asian dude.  But the clanging of garbage cans and such got a little headachy after a while.

 

            After it was over, we wandered to Warner Village for eats.  Bill stopped at the McD’s for fries; I refused since I’ve had such bad experiences with McD’s here, but tried a fry and it was amazingly good and “authentic”; he said this McD’s is better than the others.  We went into the food court where Bill the seasoned frequenter advised on what to get and where, so Ginger and I got crepes.  She was a little disappointed since her crepe just had kernels of corn and ham “ding” (cubes); but she compensated by sticking fries into it.  Likewise they got my order wrong; even though I ended up paying less, I didn’t get what I wanted and never got a “bu hau yi si” (Sorry).  That’s all I ask for man, a simple apology!  We dug in and it was pretty good though the sweet crepe plus salty filling is a little weird, and watched the movie trailers on the rotating circular screen near the ceiling.  They made fun of me whenever I got excited by 8 Mile previews.  “You like bad-ass guys, I see,” said Bill, but I protested, “No he’s not, he is actually very sweet inside; he sings about his kid all the time.”

            “So does Wil Smith.  Do you like him too?”

            “…sings about how much his daughter means to him, how much he loves her…”

            “He also sings about killing his wife!”

            “Well, yeah…but that’s because she cheated on him.”

            “Oh, of course, obviously.  Murder is completely justified then!”

 

            We walked back, commenting on the grassy depressing wasteland, and Ernest said it’s because this used to be a site for executions, so now no businesses want to build on it, since it’s cursed.  Great, so instead they turned it into a mini-model of America.  Is there some hidden meaning there?

 

            Though it was a fun time, I was starting to feel coughy and headachy on the MRT home.