Jack Yan on Vox

Capt Kirk gets off a speeding ticket

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 11 May 2008 12:14:58 +1200

Just as I finished writing about Philip Glenister getting his driver off a ticket by acting as Gene Hunt, I surfed over to an article about Canadian actor William Shatner linked from the Daily Mail page I cited earlier:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=565380&in_page_id=1879

In the 1960s, Shatner wore his Capt Kirk uniform rushing to work and was also stopped. He writes:

I got out of my car, dressed in my uniform. The police officer looked me up and down, frowned and asked: “So where are you going so fast at this time in the morning?”
I told him the truth: “To my spaceship.”
He sighed. “OK, go ahead,” he said, before adding the Vulcan blessing: “Live long and prosper.”

Nothing new under the sun.
The story is quite good, told in the first person. Shatner recounts his lows and the death of his third wife (after what seems to be the final paragraph talking about the price of his autobiography).

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It’s reached the Olympics—Edison Chen scandal fallout continues

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:24:32 +1300

If you thought the story of Amir Massoud Tofangsazan was embarrassing, what if something similar happened to a celebrity?
   Over the last few weeks, the Edison Chen scandal has rocked Hong Kong and even affected the Beijing Olympics.
   Chen, a Canadian-born actor about to make a big US début—already he’s a Pepsi spokesman in Hong Kong—took in his laptop for repair but forgot to take down his home-made porn, which includes 12 female celebrities.
   Just as with Laptop Guy (Thomas Sawyer) in the UK with Amir’s photos in 2006, someone at the computer shop decided they would post the 1,200-plus images and videos on to the ’net.
   If we think the Britney Spears Machine is bad, Hong Kong tabloids make that look like a old world gentlemen’s club.
   PC World offers this analogy: ‘Imagine photos of, say, Matthew McConaughey popping up on the Internet, showing him in various states of undress and sexual acts with, say, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson and Kirsten Dunst.’
   One of the celebs implicated is Gillian Chung, who was supposedly going to perform at the Olympics. Not any more. Prior to this month she had a wholesome image—now she may be more associated with performing and receiving oral sex. (The logical thing now would be to revamp her image as Madonna does regularly, but whether that will go down well in the innocent Cantopop world is another matter.)
   Batgwa summarizes the other celebs:

The biggest female stars implicated were Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) and Cecilia Cheung (張栢芝).
Other less well known female celebrities were implicated too, including Bobo Chan (陳文媛), Rachel Ngan (顏穎思), Mandy Chen (陳育嬬), Candice Chan (陳思慧) and Edison’s current girlfriend Vincy Yeung (楊永晴).

   Chen has basically announced, at 27, his retirement from the Hong Kong scene. He might have to: some of the celebs may have Triad connections (there is some gang involvement in Hong Kong moviemaking) and he’s received death threats.
   Cops have arrested nine people so far in connection with the unlawful distribution of the images.
   While Chen is no saint, he deserved his privacy. The poster has essentially brought down the careers of several people. I suppose this is a reminder that when you are in the public eye, you need to take precautions. Putting your own porn on to a disc or a flash drive would be an idea—or simply be a role model and being less promiscuous in relationships and never fear these leaks.
   We may criticize Chen for his behaviour and we certainly should criticize the breach of trust from the shop, but the problem is wider. We need to ask ourselves just where our values are—and the way the Chinese people have reacted shows that they have not fled the free and occupied parts of China.

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Richardson case like Terri Schiavo’s; meanwhile, Canadian doctors want to euthanase elderly man

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 11:43:31 +1300

I have been reading about Terri Schiavo again after learning of two new cases on the Jus Me Again blog.
   I was against the removal of Terri’s feeding tube. I’ll come right out and say that now. However, I did not believe Michael Schiavo should have been vilified the way he was by some people. I believe he did what he thought to be right and what he thought Terri had wanted. I do feel he might have been swayed by the medical “establishment”.
   Among my reasons is that medical science cannot give us any determination about a person’s spirit, although I know this inquiry is irrelevant to those in the field. Another major reason is not against medical science itself but against some who apply it. Healthcare is too often founded on monetary considerations, not about right and wrong.
   Before the technology that kept Terri alive had been invented, wouldn’t many families have prayed that they had something like that?
   And now that we do have defibrillators and more modern scientific technologies, we are ignoring them and saying, ‘Let them die,’ and getting courts to divorce themselves from the spiritual element.
   After Terri’s feeding tube was removed, she took another 13 days to join the Lord. That doesn’t sound a lot like someone who had just given up the fight and was ready to be outta here. And before I get criticized, I do know what it’s like to look after someone you love who is battling something that medical science regards is terminal.
   There are too many cases in my family where western medicine had given up on someone, but eastern medicine and prayer had not.
   The latter usually win.
   My grandfather’s advanced liver cancer was cured by praying and by quickly rushing him herbs from Hong Kong to drink as a tonic. The two weeks the “experts” gave him turned out to be 21 years.
   We hear of cases like this in my family regularly enough for me to place less faith in some of the medical judgements that are made.
   I accept that the cases I have confronted are different, but I believe my experience allows me to at least imagine what I would do more clearly.
   I commented today that having differently abled people in our lives shows whether we can be God-like:

There are a few ways to look at the disabled. The first is that they give us the opportunity to experience an element of Godliness. I purposely use the Father’s name here. He does not judge any of us and loves us all equally. Knowing people who society classes as ‘disabled’ or differently abled is a training ground for seeing if we can remove our prejudices and extend the same love to them. The second is to understand that on a spiritual plane they are equal to us. None of us can say that a disabled Christian is any less a Christian or has any less of the Holy Spirit running through him or her. This can be extended to other religions or to atheists as God views us all equally on that spiritual level.

   If we forget first principles and judge things on money, then we have already taken the wrong direction.
   Twenty-three-year-old Lauren Richardson in Delaware is facing a Terri-like situation. While the reason Miss Richardson lies in hospital is clearer—she had a heroin overdose—I am not here to judge her lifestyle.
   Her mother, Edith Towers, thinks that her daughter wouldn’t want to live this way and managed to get a court order, while her father, Randy Richardson, is fighting it.
   Ms Towers says that her daughter told her that she did not want to live like Terri Schiavo if she found herself in the same situation. Again, we cannot blame her for trying to carry out what she believes are her wishes. And we would again be wrong to vilify her as many did with Michael Schiavo.
   While in her “vegetative” state, Lauren Richardson gave birth to a healthy baby girl last February.
   I do not think it is right for Ms Towers to prevent her daughter from seeing her own child, which is what the press has reported. You never know what reaction a mother might have to her own child. Lauren Richardson needs to be given at least this simple chance.
   A pro-life video shows that Lauren seems to react to family members and her dog.
   Meanwhile, a Manitoba case involving an 84-year-old man who suffered brain damage is also being fought.
   Samuel Golubchuk suffered a brain injury after a 2003 fall. He contracted pneumonia in October. The medical staff want to dehydrate him to end his life.
   Mr Golubchuk is an Orthodox Jew and does not believe that his death should be hastened, so there is no doubt about what he wants.
   In January, he regained consciousness and his doctor recorded ‘Awake’ on his chart.
   The Manitoba College of Physicians and Surgeons has guidelines that say it’s not up to the patient or the family, but the doctor, so apparently we can forget Mr Golubchuk’s views and the fact that he is awake and alive.
   This Canadian case is ridiculous, in my view, and it seems that Canada is perfectly willing to introduce euthanasia. Germany started off with euthanasing the disabled in the 1930s. It grew from there.
   Please blog about this if you want to help either Miss Richardson or Mr Golubchuk. There’s no way in heck I’d let some doctors kill me off if I were in their shoes. And for the record, while my father has said it would be horrible for someone to be a vegetable, he is as spiritual as I am on these issues.

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Eating Stories

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 23:57:39 +1300

My friend and distant relative May Yan contributed to this new book on Chinese cuisine, called Eating Stories: a Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck. It’s important for those of us in the diaspora not to lose some of our good eating habits and knowledge about traditional cuisine, and to be able to pass them on to the next generation. The way May described this book, it’s the sort of thing that I would regard as vital for my own well-being!

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Farewell Miss Moneypenny

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 10:42:55 +1200

Actress Lois Maxwell, who played Miss Moneypenny in 14 James Bond films from Dr No to A View to a Kill, has passed away in Fremantle, Western Australia, aged 80. She had moved to Australia to be closer to her son after being diagnosed with cancer, reports the BBC.
   She’ll always be the definitive Moneypenny to me, having grown up through the Roger Moore Bond years.
   What I remember from the Bond histories is that Lois Maxwell was Canadian and lied about her age to get in to the Entertainment Corps of the Canadian Army at 15. She and Roger Moore were classmates at RADA. What did surprise me from the BBC report is that Maxwell also worked as a columnist for the Toronto Sun newspaper.
   She had guest roles in The Saint (playing different characters), The Persuaders, Department S, UFO (where she also played the boss’s secretary) and other actioners in the 1960s and 1970s.
   Here at JY&A we’ll always have a reminder of her as one of the computers is named Moneypenny.
   Farewell, Lois.

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The bad poetry of Hubbards cereal

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 12:31:37 +1200

A question to Canadian New Zealanders, especially older ones who might get the reference: is the Hubbards (or, in my world, Hubbard’s) cereal Clipboard newsletter our equivalent of your Royal Bank Letter? In such a case, it should have its own ode, copyrighted to yours truly.

I open a box of Hubbards
And plough through the cereal,
I come to the bottom of box,
The chunks ever ethereal,

But one thing stands upright
As I pour the last bits out:
It’s the Clipboard from Hubbards!
What is it all about?

Bits of advice
And puzzles to play,
Marketing the brand
Through stories to relay.

It’s all the brand-building
An Auckland mayor needs:
An image of common sense
Never mind the good deeds.

But literature it is not
Though at the end of the flick,
You think back to warm fuzziness
And the man they call Dick.

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Charlie and Broken Trees

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 18:19:58 +1200

The following films by Rob Hickling star my friend Ian O’Briain, who had to gain weight for his role of Charlie in a minute-long film of the same name. The first film was entered in the International Film Minute Contest and placed fourth. Now, they’ve got a sequel, Broken Trees. Please do let them know what you think at the YouTube pages. I think they’re rather clever.

Charlie

Broken Trees

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Fun at Canada’s Camp Okutta with AK-47s, mines and grenades

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 25 Aug 2007 12:52:23 +1200

Camp Okutta - An Adventure Camp for Kids

This Canadian campaign has caused people to be up in arms—well, those who didn’t see that it is a satirical campaign raising awareness of the use of child soldiers in war zones all over the world.
   It was sent to me by Helen Cameron, a long-time reader of my blog. She sent one link which showed that there were members of the public so incensed by this that they tore down posters advertising Camp Okutta.
   But that is perhaps the reaction that the producers of the ad, WarChild Canada, a registered charity, wanted.
   When we are confronted by images of kids with AK-47s—and, let’s be frank, they are usually African kids in an African jungle—we find that there is some distance between us and them. WarChild Canada has been clever by setting Camp Okutta in Canada itself, using kids of different races in a local setting. It brings home the message far more effectively than a street campaign or one founded in reality.
   Have a glance: it certainly made me think about the issue in a different way.

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What are your top TV crybaby moments?

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 17:43:12 +1200

I rather like Manon-It-All’s Vox post, ‘Top 5 Crybaby Television Moments’. It did dawn on me that I have not seen ER, Roseanne or Everybody Loves Raymond—the latter was on TV2 in New Zealand on Sunday afternoons for ages where it could not be found—and I wish I had seen the episode of Newsradio that she mentions.
This question could have been good enough for a QOTD at Vox—perhaps comment on what you think are your top five at her blog.

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Back from Facebook

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Mon, 21 May 2007 23:56:58 +1200

If anyone is wondering where I have been, the answer is Facebook. Darn, that site is addictive. There are groups on there as well as a social-networking function, and my opinion (with my initial opposition) has turned 180 degrees thanks to Facebook’s good service and the tidiness of its interface. The groups themselves have more or less supplanted my interest in Yahoo! Groups. I can even import my blog entries.
   There are half a dozen Jack Yans on there, however, though I imagine you do not need to be a rocket scientist to figure out which one is yours truly.
   There is an awful lot of Canadians there, which is interesting. I am not sure if Facebook is a Canadian site, but their nationals seem to have taken to it more than any other group.
   Any friends reading this, feel free to link me. Quite a few of my contacts there appear to be fellow bloggers to whom I am linked through my main site’s blog roll.

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