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Written by Russell Johnson
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I hate monkeys. Maybe it is just envy. Although there is ample evidence that our evolutionary stem has developed a superior brain, deep down at the coccyx of my psyche there may still exist the tail stub of an ape. Maybe I still have a repressed urge to play with myself in public, fling my feces and steal every shiny object that isn't nailed down. Last month at the Uluwatu temple in Bali, Indonesia I got stuck in a tourist trap, a narrow passageway facing a phalanx of not-so-great apes. Luckily I had been warned to remove my glasses and shiny objects and clutch my camera. But a woman in front of me was not so cautious. She let out a scream as a marauding macaque snatched her earring and taunted her to return it in exchange for a banana. Come to think of it, this hairy extortionist might consider an alternate career in banking.
But monkeys are untouchable in this Hindu temple perched on a cliff above the Indian Ocean. Every night, in a performance of the Kecak, or Monkey Dance, the monkey-like Varana helps a prince fight off an evil king while 100 men chatter like macaques.
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Written by Russell Johnson
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I had a dream that the Grand Lisboa tower, a hotel-casino that now dominates the skyline of Macau, came alive one night, pulled itself from its mooring, marched across China's Pearl River Delta and, like Godzilla, tossed trolley cars around Hong Kong.
Ka-Ching? (a Chinese expression?)
Like Vegas in the 90s, this former Portuguese backwater colony, now called East Las Vegas, has gone over-the-top.
I think about my week in Macau last year as I walk the strip in Las Vegas, past rubble-strewn lots that look like some lizard of mass destruction had just swung through. Past construction cranes that have not moved an inch since my last visit a year ago. Past women stuffed in short tight skirts like shrimp in sushi rolls, alone or in pairs, peering at their mobiles. This is not the Las Vegas of the mid-century when Mo Dalitz and his pals ruled and in the words of a longtime restaurateur, "knew how to take care of people." This is not the Vegas of the 90s when the Steve Winns and corporate poobahs built palaces and faux New Yorks and Venices and "family values" was the motto. This is the Now Las Vegas: down and a bit dirtier, but not out.
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Written by Russell Johnson
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My first impression of India was high culture plus high chaos. But then I hadn't been to Kerala, a multicultural waterworld in India's southwest.
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Written by Russell Johnson
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HDTV Version Windows Media
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Forget Mad Max, forget Bladerunner, forget The Matrix and all of the rest of those visions of a future of bombed out cities, leather-clad mutants and cyborgs on Harleys. I am looking at the REAL future, a tall, marble-floored tower of soft-spoken beings offering precious gifts of Gucci and Tiffany and YSL, every overpriced name brand on earth, in fact, and a grand piano that plays itself. A world sealed away from grit and random noise, stray animals and poor people.
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Written by Russell Johnson
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So, how do you get to Shangri-la? Frank Capra hung a right on the Coast Highway just below Ventura and motored up to Ojai, the backdrop for his 1937 movie “Lost Horizons.” The story’s author, James Hilton, on the other hand, headed north through California’s Central Valley to the base of Mt. Shasta. In an interview, Hilton said the tiny town of Weaverville was the place that spoke “Shangri-la” to him.
But the Shangri-la of Capra’s snow machine and Hilton’s imagination is a valley hidden amidst the peaks and wooly yaks of the Tibetan Plateau and China lays claim to that: the real estate and now the name.
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