It was only a matter of time until O.J. proved to us all why he probably should have been locked up for the rest of his life. The former football star was arrested Sunday for his participation in an armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room. Reportedly, auction house owner Tom Riccio tipped off O.J. that collector Alfred Beardsley was about to sell numerous pieces of Simpson memorabilia including the suit he wore in court when he was acquitted of murder in 1995. Riccio contacted Beardsley and told him that he had some people interested in buying the items. And by “people” he meant O.J. and some thugs with guns. And by “buying” he meant stealing. On Thursday night, Simpson and six dudes he met at a wedding that night stormed Beardsley’s hotel room, waved guns and retrieved items that Simpson claim were “stolen” from him. My first thought is that if I were at a wedding, and O.J. came up to me and was like, “Hey man, you wanna come steal some shit with me,” I’m pretty sure I would respectfully decline. He found six guys, and coincidentally 2 of them had guns. Simpson defended himself over the weekend by telling the press, “Everybody knows this is stolen stuff. Nobody was roughed up… I’m not walking around feeling sad or anything. I’ve done nothing wrong.” Ah, except for killing your wife and her boyfriend. Also, if you are denying claims of an armed robbery, “roughed up” might not be the best phrase to use. But back to O.J. killing his wife. As we all know, O.J. killed his wife Nicole Brown Simpson back in 1994 and was found not guilty of the crime in one of the most high-profile and unjust trials in American history. So as I’m reading up on this story, I went to one of my favorite Web sites, The Huffington Post, a usually very reliable source for news. But while searching for O.J. news I came across a morbid error on the sidebar of an index of HuffPo O.J. stories. This is from their “What People Are Saying” section:
Uh…I’m pretty sure Nicole Brown Simpson didn’t say that Sunday considering she’s dead and all. For thirteen years now. Simpson faces 6 to 70 years for both robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. Perhaps O.J. will finally get what he deserves.
•NYT: Simpson Arrested and Charged
•HuffPo: Search Page for "O.J. Simpson"
So I guess they’ve evacuated Shanghai and no one bothered to tell me. Typhoon Wipha has landed in Shanghai and reportedly, to paraphrase from a BBC report, shit is gonna get fucked up. Winds are expected to hit 155 miles per hour and dump 55 millimeters of rain, however much that is. This is no regular typhoon. Seriously. The Shanghai Meteorological Bureau issued a yellow alert this morning. A yellow alert! The only alerts more ominous than yellow are orange and red ones. And what it means is that Typhoon Wipha has been upgraded to a “super typhoon.” It also means that my Adidas windbreaker that I call on for rainy days will probably not do the trick. It also means that more people will probably die as a result of being impaled by umbrella spokes on the way home from work than from the typhoon itself. The AP quoted “the man who answered the phone at the city’s meteorological bureau” as saying, “The typhoon is very likely to develop into the worst one in recent years. We are still observing it. It’s hard to say at this moment.” What we do know is that 200,000 coastal residents in Shanghai have been evacuated as a precaution and that my dinner plans tonight are fucking shot. There is only one question that remains: what on God’s green earth does “Wipha” mean? In America we have things called “hurricanes” with normal names like Andrew and Hugo. No such luck around here. Flumesday’s chief meteorological expert tells me that Wipha is a name for a Thai girl. Tuesday, and potentially for the next two days, this Thai girl will be bringing a different kind of “boom-boom” to Shanghai.
California-bred Linkin Park will rap-rock its way into the mainland on November 18th for what promises to be Shanghai’s biggest fall concert. The sextet will stop at Hongkou Stadium for one night as part of their “Minutes to Midnight” world tour. Along with the Shanghai show, the band will perform in Seoul, Singapore and Hong Kong. Despite the fact that Linkin Park has never played mainland China before, their mix of melodramatic nu-metal screaming and simple-minded staccato hip-hop resonates with a young undiscerning Chinese audience. The band was rumored to be coming to Shanghai last spring, but like most of the gossip surrounding Western acts coming to Shanghai, it didn’t happen. Through some of my conversations about American music with Chinese guys (who invariably bring up Linkin Park), I realize this band is well-received in China. It makes perfect sense. This band ruled American music right around when the internet blew up and gave Chinese people access to non-Chinese music. My only hope is that Mike “rap” Shinoda and Chester “rock” Bennington are not the only ones representing rock music in modern China. Tickets go on sale Tuesday through 
China will soon join Singapore, Canada and Thailand as countries with those horrifying pictures on their cigarette boxes. China’s Center for Disease Control has just written new laws mandating that, by 2009, tobacco companies cover over 30% of each box with photos of skulls, rotting teeth, black lungs or men hooked up to IVs, who we can only assume are dying from lung cancer. Every time I hear of a new initiative on behalf of China’s central government to curb smoking, I always wonder the same thing: why don’t they just print up about a million “no smoking” signs, put them up in certain places and try and make China not so damn smoker-friendly. Because currently, you can smoke wherever you want in mainland China. And that means restaurants, elevators, office buildings and even hospitals. A Reuters story Tuesday claimed that there are parts of China where the average age people start smoking is ten. In a couple years, when cigarette packs have scary pictures on them, my guess is that Chinese people will find it amusing rather than be spooked. In Thailand, the country with the most graphic warnings (photo), the labels actually encouraged me to buy cigarettes as I wanted to find new grotesque boxes that I’d never seen before. My favorite was the one of the man holding his child blowing smoke into the kid’s face. It seemed more apropos of a campaign targeting stupidity than one for smoking. And to be frank, China might not be the right place to use a decayed set of teeth to make a point. If you know what I mean.
Ang Lee’s newest film, “Lust, Caution,” which took top honors at this year’s Venice Film Festival, will have to be cut significantly before its China release on October 26th. The “spy-thriller,” according to China’s censors, featured too much nasty boot-knocking. According to a Reuters report Wednesday, Lee cut the edited-for-China version himself rather than leave the job to China’s Information Ministry. The director, who also took home the Venice trophy in 2005 for Brokeback Mountain, told the media that despite cutting 30 minutes from the original, “the spirit of the film remains despite the cutting and the fluency will not be affected.” I haven’t seen the film, nor will I go to my local Shanghai cinema to pay money to watch a film absent of 30 minutes of some good Chinese sex and violence. And anyone who’s seen Brokeback knows that Ang Lee know how to capture sex on screen. Well, gay sex at least. So what will I do instead? I will wait for the original cut of “Lust, Caution” on pirated DVD. For those who have not made up their mind, here is the first paragraph of a review from the always-entertaining Slant Magazine:
A television reporter claims to have filmed a 20-minute video of China’s answer to the Loch Ness monster. The “Tianchi Monster,” as it is known, might be as many as 20 massive reptiles thought to have human-like heads, 4-foot necks, wings and seal-like bodies living in China’s Tianchi Lake, near the North Korean border. Zhong Yongsheng, a local news reporter, told Xinhua that he went to the south side of the mountain over Tianchi Lake last Thursday to shoot the sunrise. At around 5:30am, one of Zhong’s guides pointed out a large figure surfacing from the center of the lake. According to a Xinhua story Monday:
What do you get when you mix 4 obese Chinese women, outlandish costumes and some microphones? Well, first you get a singing group called Qian Jin Zu He, a gimmick group composed of a 375-pound chick and three others weighing over a deuce and a half. And second, you get a Washington Post feature story exploring the trend of obesity in modern mainland China. I know what your thinking. Obesity in China has been written about a million times. True, but this is an especially interesting effect of the obesity trend in China, that you now get entertainers in China who are fatter than fat can be. The lead singer of the group (the 375-pound one) told the Washington Post that her discovery by a talent agent was “like a tree branch saving me in the water.” If I’m a 375-pound Chinese woman in a leotard, the last thing I would compare myself to is a tree branch. Maybe a tree trunk. On a redwood or something. According to Maureen Fan of the Post, the group enjoys modest success, touring nightclubs, malls and factories all over China. In today’s China, where obesity is more common and less accepted, the four girls of Qian Jin Zu He are attempting to change attitudes about what is beautiful. Their biggest hit is a rap song called, “So What If I’m Fat.” Their Chinese name is a play on words meaning both “1000 pieces of gold” and “Just Over 1000 pounds.” The second meaning is quite accurate actually.
This is awesome. Zhang Shaocang, a disgraced Chinese official standing trial for corruption, wept through a four-page apology letter begging the court for a lenient sentencing. That part is not awesome. The awesome part is that the four-page letter he read was written by another corrupt official, Zhu Fuzhong, who read the same exact letter at a sentencing 2 weeks ago in a Sichuan province court. The plagiarized apology letter was printed in the Procuratorial Daily, a national legal newspaper and Zhang printed it out and read it as his own. According to a Reuters story Wednesday, “Apart from using whole sentences word for word, Zhang also — more craftily — made ’slight changes” in other areas.” Reportedly Zhu’s letter had succeeded in securing him a light sentence and Zhang hoped that the same letter and a similar fit of tears would do the trick. You would think an official on trial for taking bribes might want to be honest about his apology. Once a crook, always a crook.
The Financial Times reported Monday that China’s military had hacked the computer system of U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates in June and that in general, China engages in the world’s most advanced cyber-terrorism. According to the report, the Pentagon was forced to shut down its system for more than a week in order to detect and expunge any trace of Chinese spy software. American officials are still investigating how much information was stolen. The Guardian claimed Wednesday that the Peeps Liberation Army had launched similar attacks to the British Parliament’s computer system as well. Even the Germans have complained that computers at the Chancellery were infected by Chinese Trojans. I’m not sure what kind of Trojan the Germans are talking about, because I’ve searched high and low for Chinese Trojans, and all I can find are these little Durex things. Of course China responded to the Financial Times’ report with the old, “Huh? What? Cybercrime? Us?” Very similar to the official reponse of, “Wait, pirated movies and software?, here? in China?” response. China’s foreign ministry spokeswoman called the claims “groundless” saying, “China has all along been opposed to and forbids criminal activities undermining computer networks, including hacking. China is ready to strengthen cooperation with other countries, including the U.S., in countering Internet crimes.” China’s government has often separated itself from such instances of cyber-terrorism and placed the blame on renegade hackers working alone. Which means one of two things. Either this isn’t true and the military has no knowledge of the attacks (doubtful). Or that Wen Wen down at the internet cafe is sitting there all day reading classified US Defense documents. In English no less. I guess when you get busted spying by three different countries, you probably don’t want to say it was you.
America’s Labor Day came and went on Monday which means the summer is behind us, the kids go back to school and autumn will be here soon. For many it means one last beach weekend, family barbecue, baseball game, pool party. For others it means the football season is here. Since 1966, Americans associate the Labor Day holiday with one antediluvian actor/comedian who, despite outliving all his contemporaries by at least a decade, still takes to the television airwaves every year to try and raise money to cure muscular dystrophy. The 81-year-old entertainer Jerry Lewis seemed to have been suffering from mental dystrophy on Monday when during the 18th hour of his live telecast, he called a member of his production team an “illiterate faggot.” According to an MSNBC story Tuesday, Lewis was ranting about an imaginary family when he dropped the F-bomb on camera. It has not been confirmed whether the target of the remark is a homosexual or is unable to read and write. Lewis released a statement, which may or may not have to be read to the member of his production staff in question, that said, “I apologize to anyone who was offended. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard. In the family atmosphere of the telethon, I forget that not everyone knows me that well.” He went on to say that he “makes no excuses” for his remark. Except that he got caught up in the “family atmosphere” of the telethon. Because I guess in Lewis’s family, “illiterate faggot” is a pet name. This year’s telethon raised $63.7 million for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the most ever in the telethon’s 42-year history.