The Peculiarities of a Birthday Abroad

Yesterday marked my 23rd year as an air-breathing human. The first half of my day was a self-pitious mess. I missed home, I lamented over the slow service and bad Pad Thai I received, and I pined for a better book to read. On the verge of being a total misty-eyed-mess I made my way to an internet cafe.

This internet cafe was a thing of beauty. For once I had broadband speeds that actually rivaled those at home. I was able to download and watch YouTube videos and clips of The Daily Show. Once my hungers for pop-culture were sated, I opened up Skype and began calling family and friends back home.

I don't have a cell phone on this trip, so there is no way for folks at home to contact me other than email. Which meant that it was up to me to give people an opportunity to sing me "Happy Birthday". Initially I would call, and chit chat about whatever - hoping that eventually my conversational partner would catch wise and sing me the birthday ballad.

By the time I called my sister Tamara the conversation went something like this:

DONOVAN

Hi Tam. Sorry to call you while you're at work. But since I had a good internet connection I figured I'd give you a buzz.

TAMARA

Oh, hi Bro. Let me just get somewhere that's not a cubicle.

DONOVAN
There's no point beating around the bush here. I'm calling to wish myself a happy birthday.

TAMARA
Huh? You're what?

DONOVAN

I'm calling to wish myself a happy birthday.

TAMARA
Happy Birthday Donovan!

Long Semi-Awkward Pause

TAMARA (Continued)
Do you want me to sing you the Birthday song or something?

DONOVAN

That would be most excellent.

TAMARA sings the Birthday song.

DONOVAN
Okay, well it was great talking to you, have a good day at work.

TAMARA

Okay, take care.

So pitiful was this display, that the kindly Brittish lady who was sitting next to me in the e-cafe wished me a Happy Birthday. She then explained that it was her son's 45th birthday and he'd just had a child. She then said "I sort of wish that I was home to be there with him. But to be honest, [being on vacation in Laos] is way better."

In retrospect it seems a horribly selfish a babyish thing to do. But it in all honesty, it made my day and bouyed my spirits to no end. It was good to talk to folks back home and feel like I was still connected to the rest of the world.

After all this Gabriel took me out to dinner where I had a Beer Lao and capped the night off with a Rotee, the Laosian Churro equivalent.

A good day. Thanks too all who talked and sent well wishes my way, It was greatly appreciated.

At The Massage Parlour

Yesterday I discovered that I had a knot in my left shoulder, so I went for a massage. Full body massages are about $3/hr in SE Asia and are generally pretty good. Apparently someone had coached my massage therapist that it was good to keep a small talk conversation going:

HER

What you name?

ME

Donovan. What is your name?

HER

Pawn.

pause.

PAWN

How old you?

DONOVAN

22.

PAWN

Oh. Me 19.

DONOVAN

Are you studying anywhere? School?

PAWN

Done study? You study?

DONOVAN

I'm done studying too.

The massage continues. Pawn starts on Donovan's right foot. More silence. Pawn grabs some of the hair on Donovan's shin and yanks.

DONOVAN

Ow!

PAWN

King Kong.

DONOVAN

Huh? Oh, yes. Hairy, yes my legs are hairy.

Silence

PAWN

King Kong no good.

Awkward silence

PAWN

All finished. You go now.

A swimmer swims, a writer writes, an actor... drinks coffee.

I have long admired Roger Ebert's writing. Due to a number of surgeries to treat his cancer Roger Ebert lost the ability to speak. In response, he seems to be writing more than ever. In addition to his regular movie reviews, he's started up a wonderful blog. In a recent post, he had this to say to an aspiring writer who wondered how to start:

Ebert: Actually, maybe I can help you. There is nothing you don't "get" because there is nothing to get. You are the writer. What you write is what is written. It is exactly right because it is exactly what you wrote. If someone else doesn't think so, fuck 'em. There is no objective goal, no objective right or wrong. Only the process. Your mind will set itself down in words. Do not criticize. Do not look back at every sentence. Just write. You have no idea where you are headed. Your words will lead you. This above all: Nothing is ever completed until it is started. Start. Don't look back. If at the end it doesn't meet your hopes, start again. Now you know more about your hopes.

So there you go folks. Get to it.

----------------------------

As an aside: what is an actor to do? Acting without an audience or a partner seems an exercise in absurdity. What does the daily work of an actor consist of?

Chronicles in Cleaning

Apparently it's possible to wash a shirt in a sink at night and have it dry before the next morning.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The Entirely UnSexy Side of (indie) Fim Production

This is a post that I dedicate to Prince who told me:

Don't come back all dirty and gross.

Continuity is something that you hear a lot about on a film set. Actors have to repeat the same motions and dialogue ad naseum so that they can be captured from different angles and focal lengths. To shoot one minute of finished film can easily take all day.

The way the "Around The World" project is currently structured, each 30 minute episode takes place over the course of a single day. What this means is that I'm in the same costume everyday that we're shooting a given episode. We've been shooting in Cambodia for about two weeks now.

In a major film or television show this isn't an issue. Sets are air-conditioned, every costume piece is purchased or constructed in triplicate and is regularly washed (Harrison Ford had over 20 identical hats for the latest Indiana Jones) . We're shooting outdoors in 90 degrees with 90 percent humidity - as well as hiking to all of our locations. To say that we sweat is something of an understatement. Unfortunately to get clothing laundered takes a couple days, which is to say: I've been wearing the exact shirt and pants for ~12 days - unwashed.

I shower twice daily, douse myself in baby powder, and run headlong for my clean change of clothes after the shooting days end. However, none of this has prevented me from developing a splotchy red heat rash on my back. Eeew. Eeew. Eeeeeew. Hydrocortozone cream is a Godsend .

Hmmm, it looks like my blog's readership just dropped to -4.

That being said, I am having the time of my life shooting this thing.

A new peer group can lead to a new way of thinking.

A few weeks ago when Loren and I were in Chiang Mai, Thailand we met a guy named Dave in the Air Asia ticket office. Dave was an anthropologist helping his girlfriend do research on Aquaculture in Southern Vietnam. We ended up spending the rest of the day with him, visiting temples, eating a variety of dishes at a phenomenal restaurant off the beaten path and all around having a good time.

As we walked around the city we kept seeing signs for walk-in dentists. Bill, our other companion and a doctor, told us that the dental work in Thailand was great and that if there was any work we needed done, we might as well do it in Chiang Mai. Being image conscious products of Los Angeles culture, $100 for 1hr tooth whitening was too good a deal to pass up. Dave even perked up a little at the prospect - he had teeth, he drank coffee, why not?! It came to pass that there were only two dentists open at 8pm with seats available for teeth whitening, so Dave missed out.

When I ran into Dave a couple weeks later, he remarked "It's suprising how quickly your thought processes can change when you're with a different peer group. When I was hanging out with you and Loren, I somehow thought that getting my teeth whitened was the absolute perfect thing to do - forgetting that I didn't even have $100 to do it with."

Which made me think of a few things about my thinking that have shifted since my arrival:

• Safety: In the states, I am safety conscious to a point that could be characterized as psychotic paranoia. Anyone who has seen me do a speedy silly walk across the street to avoid a car 3 blocks away is well away of this. Well, since I've arrived I've had to give up:
• Seatbelts - Most cabs don't have them, and if they do they don't work.
• Helmets - Nobody wears them in Cambodia, so there's not sense waiting for a moto driver that has one for you; he doesn't exist.
• Sanitation:
• Soap - over here, soap is practically nonexistant. You're lucky to find running water, and when you do you're even luckier to find a hand towel.
• Toilet Paper - TP is now to be used as a napkin, hand towel, tissue, almost everything except toilet paper. A lot of toilets don't have TP, have to bring your own.

Well, there are plenty more things that have changed, but this is all I have time for at the moment. Perhaps I'll start a regular feature: stuff that was weird but now is par de rigeur.

Cute or Tasty?

It is fairly well established, that predators are inclined to first attack the young and sickly prey animals.

Humans have an in-built cuteness detector. It probably has something to do with head to body ratio. Regardless, I find myself scrunching my face up and saying "Awwww! Isn't that the cutest..." puppy, kitten, water buffalo. Water buffalo?! Yes, I saw a cute water buffalo today.

So my question is this: Do tigers recognize that an animal is cute and thus young and thus edible and thus delicious? Or are we the only animals with cute detectors? Or better still: at what point did our ability to detect the easiest prey get transmogrified in our positive emotional reactions to "cute" animals?

These are the things keeping me up nights folks.

Travel Affords Time to Read

The television in my latest hotel room has no cable. This has afforded me ample time to read, something at home I always aspire to do more of. So far on this trip I have read:

1. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
2. A Very Short History of the World by Geoffrey Blainey
3. The Gum Thief by Douglas Copeland
4. You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers
5. Life Expectancy by Dean Koontz
6. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
7. And a few pages of some horrendous novel I bought in an airport and later threw away.

Bonfire of the Vanities is my runaway favorite, but they're all worth a read except for "Life Expectancy". Pure dross, unless you love narratives about psychotic clowns.

Socially Starved While Never Alone

Despite both being brown haired graduates of UC Santa Cruz's Film program Gabriel and I are fundamentally different people. Evidence:

1. We do not share the same atoms.
2. Gabriel's hair is curly, while mine is floppy.
3. I get anxious in solitude while Gabriel craves it.

We find ourselves in an interesting position, we spend over 12hrs a day with each other. We are both experiencing social anxiety for different reasons. He, because there's no escaping social interaction. Me, because I don't find myself in a variety of different social circles with regularity.

Please note: Gabriel and I are getting along swimmingly. No drama, no attempted strangling, and our friendship remains intact.

At home, I have different friends for different activities, and many days where multiple activities are planned. If the interval between conversational partners grows too long I find myself in a glum state of mind. To illustrate: I once attended a party in college wearing a pair of wings - I was... wait for it... A social butterfly. At first I thought I was wearing the costume ironically, it wasn't until I catalogued the events of the evening to myself later that night that I realized that the costume had been worn in earnest.

Moral of the story: I was quite happy to be shooting scenes with Scott today.

Enough with the ancient engineering marvels!

I've been shooting scenes for "The Untitled Around The World Project" in Angkor, Cambodia. Angkor Wat is a phenomenal construction, it's apparently the largest religious site in the world. It's vast to the point of being vastly vast. It's basically this huge compound constructed entirely out of carefully cut stacked and carved stone. There's no mortar or cement, inertia is the only thing keeping the walls up and in position.


The thing is, we've been scouting locations and shooting in Angkor (home to tens of these temples) for a week now. As beautiful and astounding as these structures are, I'd be glad to have some time where I'm not schvitzing like a kinnish as I schlep myself up the catywampus stairs.

Oh the stairs. As we all know, stairs are deeper than they are high. This integral part of their design is in place so that our feet can find purchase and security as we ascend and descend. Well, the ancient Kmher (Cambodians) hadn't worked that out, or at least didn't care. It's not uncommon to climb up a 15' flight of stairs with each step being 18" high and only 4" deep. It's basically like rock climbing with a really easy (but still potentially deadly if untethered) slope.

If this seems unnecessarily glum of me, I have it on good authority that anyone who travels through Europe for an extended period gets tired of visiting castles and looking at rennaissance paintings. That said, these locations photograph beautifully. I'll post pictures once I sort out my digital camera e-cafe blues. Despite an eensie budget, this project is going to have some of the most beautiful backdrops ever committed to film (ok HDV tape).

I think we've got about 4 more days left and then its on to Laos.

Panoramas From My Travels

Sien Reap, Cambodia

Chiang Mai, Thailand

Ton Sai, Thailand

Super Affordable, Ultra-Plush Medical Center. Bangkok, Thailand

Siem Reap: A homebody's attempt to travel

When I explained to my friend Loren that I had been spending a lot of time watching HBO with Gabriel, he sent the following email in response:

You idiot.

Venture out.

You will be filled with regret if you don't.
You have studied pantomime.
Keep a card for the hotel with you and you are fine.
Get out.
Go.

And so with that in mind, I have ventured into the world today. I logged my hotel's coordinates into my GPS device and started walking around. I got an area map from my hotel and found a little cafe where I ate breakfast. I found a Cambodian cooking class and signed up. I'm heading there now.

Even when travelling I can find it hard to break inertia. Here's hoping with practice it gets easier.

Phanam Pen, Asia's New Orleans

The outskirts of Phanam Pen penetrate into the heart of the city. Which is to say, there exists no line between city and shanty town, or if there is, the line is broad and permeable. The exception is the tourist and ex-patriate district on the riverfront. I felt an immediate affinity for the area - here is something I know, here is something safe.

The weather, the location, and even the French-colonial architecture make it feel like New Orleans. Gabriel and I split a bottle of white wine and ate at an upscale Thai restaurant. The wine buzz made me fall in love with the city.

It's a shame we only spent one night in Phanam Pen, it is a city that begs further exploration.

Cambodia: Shit Just Got Real

Cambodia would like to welcome you to the third world. The one where people are genuinely poor and no amount of cultural relativism can make these living conditions seem okay.

Gabriel and I took a bus from Saigon, Viet Nam to Phanam Pen, Cambodia. Almost immediately after crossing the border between the two countries, the differences were evident. In Viet Nam, most of the poorer people lived in cinderblock homes and had a motorized skooter (even if it had to be ridden simultaneously by all 5 family members). Whereas in Cambodia, it seems that everyone in the countryside is living in thatched shade covers made from what look like palm fronds. Everything is dirty, everything is dusty, and even the chatchkees wrapped in plastic that are being sold to tourists are sunbleached.

As I looked around and saw this, I said to Gabriel: "Shit just got real."

The nicer homes bordering the river are all on stilts. The regular rain and flooding seems to be the rationale.

Shooting in Vietnam

I keep finding myself in countries that I know next to nothing about. In part this is because of the nature of this project - I'm hopping from country to country, following clues. We don't get the guidebook for the next country until we're en route, and while we're on the plane, Gabriel is usually trying to find a decent hotel for us to stay in. So I show up, knowing (if I'm lucky) how to mispronounce the local equivalent of "thank you".

And so it was with Vietnam. Outside of movies about the Vietnam war (more exactly, the Vietnam-America war) I was pretty much entirely ignorant of the country. My dad was a photographer for the Navy during the war. Apparently he also worked as a life guard at Vung Tao, pulling drunk army out of the ocean. But outside of stories about how he tried to support the anti-war movement by dropping flyers from government aircraft he didn't really talk much about his time in Viet Nam.

I felt genuinely oogy about being a tourist in a country that we had been actively fighting in not too long ago. Gabriel attempted to assuage my fears, saying "Honestly Donovan, they're over it. It's like being a Japanese tourist in America."

Ho Chi Minh City (or Saigon as you probably know it) is home to some of the nastiest traffic I have ever witness in my life. The Los Angeles 405 is a dream compared to 5pm at any given traffic circle in Saigon. Everybody, everybody is on motorized skooters. Honda is the manufacturer of choice. To cross the street is to put your complete faith in the kindess of human beings; bikes and cars never stop, they just swerve to avoid. Correction: motos will swerve, but a car will end you.

Blergh - I'm having a hell of a time writing this post. Perhaps I'll start with the present and add recollections as they occur.

The Absent Blogger

Hello All,

It appears I've been too busy living my life of late to catalogue it. At least that's what I've been telling myself. But the truth is, it's just so much easier to consume media (HBO, Prince's Blog, etc) than it is to create. So this is me getting back on the horse. I'll be throwing up some posts about my travels, sorry if they all don't relate specifically to acting. Probably best to post anything than let this blog wither any further.
All the best,

Donovan