ghengis blues

i finally got around to seeing ghengis blues, which was a movie everyone told me i would love but honestly, the thought of watching throatsinging sort of freaked me out. i knew if i hated it, i would be stuck with it the rest of the film, and that just wasn't a chance i was willing to take. then! i found it free at the library and figured i had nothing to lose.

it was good. i mean, i can see now why everyone wanted me to see it. paul pena is funny and charming in a sort of self-depricating way, the throatsinging is seriously fun to listen to, and you get to hear paul do the blues. it was just amazing how he discoverd tuvan throatsinging, learned the language (first by translating from russian to english, then english to braille), and then went there. getting to tuva is not like hopping on a cross-country flight. i will admit to being a little annoyed with his hippie/freak cohorts at times, but he couldn't have traveled without them, so i take that back. i appreciated that even though the film had these great lighthearted moments, they also showed how the difficulty of being a blind man in a totally different culture. the disorientation, the loneliness, feeling like a burden, all told in paul's words. no trip is ever 100% fun times, but i bet most movie makers would have glossed over that fact to make it seem that way. even though it wasn't an easy trip, it looked like paul was having the best time ever, and it's amazing how fun that was to watch.

i just liked it a lot more than i thought i would. it cheered me up to watch it yesterday.

while out running errands yesterday i went to the only asian grocery store i've been able to find in this town, and i have to say while i'm glad to know of a place to buy haw flakes, pocky and rice crackers, the guy who runs it keeps the place way too hot and something in the back seriously stinks. due to the ridiculous heat a lot of products suffer and you never know until you get it home. super-stale sticky rice crakers suck ass. pocky that's melted and then hardened again, also sucky. i need to find another source of bao and quick.

p.s. i am still messing with the template on the blog, so that's why all posts look a little different. i like the style of this template, but the colors need some work. i'm learning!