How Many Stopovers Does It Take To Get 3 American Filmmakers To Sierra Leone? Or: No, This Is Not A Joke, We Are Seriously Asking

Things We Forgot In the Pyre: Wherein We Revisit The Adventure In Our Minds' Eyes And Recap Some Forgotten Moments

1. In Bhaktipur, truly a charming, medieval village (right outside of Kathmandu) wherein, while looking for some stuff to freaking shoot, Charles meets one Art School Confidential, who happily leads us to film in his best friend's home. Yes, there are art school kids in Bhaktipur!

2. Yes, Bertolucci shot in Bhaktipur. As Art School Confidential tells us, "Bertolucci, and now Claire Carre!"

3. At the school in Kathmandu we meet a star/diva in the making: a six year old kid named Nice To Meet You.

4. The older girls are completely dismayed when they ask Charles who his family members are and he only mentions mom, dad, sister, and brother-in-law. They seem certain that Claire must be his bossy wife.

5. And... they tease "look at the pretty girl," as Claire walks into the conversation, a bit confused.

6. The Buddhist Temple: wherein prayer flags flap in the mellow breeze and vegan food calls from the third story of a bookstore/restaurant.

7. How Could We Forget! that en route to Bandipur we rode gondola cable cars to a mountaintop temple. Goats get one-way tickets only on the open cars...ugh...

8. We fly back from Pokhara...and Claire is hit by balloons filled with sewer water. This is getting bad... and so we conclude...

9. The party is over, the sun is up, and the host's parents are home. Time to get the H out of Dodge.

This Is What Happens When You Hand The Locals The Camera

PHOTO RECAP!

1. Board another jet plane.

2. Classic Todd.

To Bandipur And Beyond!

1. Wherein Bandipur, kinda like a good 4 or 5 hours away, turns out to be somewhat less than the idyllic medieval village set in the mountains that Claire and Charles were expecting. Todd captures the moment of hushed disappointment. Yes, this is a dusty football field with goats.

2. And there is no power to get on the internets and check Claire's rough cut.

3. So, we check the maps for alternate options.

4. And decide to soldier on to Pohkara (another 3 hours away).

5. And find ourselves in a decadent colonialist hotel. Fawny and Lovey sport their matching robes. Dahling, the season's over in Nepal, time to move on to Morocco.

6. A decadent colonialist hotel with a wedding party. A very loud wedding party.

7. And Todd and Charles get screwed by the Lonely Planet guide yet again. Yes, the waiter in the darkened restaurant with no power brings Charles NONE of the three or four things he ordered. Charles plots their escape by candlelight.

8. We have to fly back to Kathmandu to make our flight out of Nepal...and get to fly by Everest in a tiny prop plane...while Claire and Todd pose for the Agni Airways promo video.

Additional Vocabulary

1. Future Jank. Also: Futurejank. Def: Technology both futuristic and cobbled together, as seen in better sci-fi films.

Art School Confidential

The Pied Piper Of Kavre

1. Wherein we drive 3 hours to a village through what appears to be the Santa Monica Mountains, the Dominican Republic, Westlake, Colorado, and New Mexico.

2. Wherein entrepreneurial kids collect tolls at makeshift roadblocks.

3. Wherein Todd becomes HERO of the town with his miraculous filming device and he leads a band of children, all with shiny gold earrings on the top part of their ears into the mountainside never to be heard from again.

4. And we make a return trip to the airport's COMPLAINT DESK and finally acquire Claire's lost bag. Incidentally, nothing is missing, but it contains some make-up purchased in Hong Kong.

5. And we see a large bar top or perhaps a countertop being carried through the airport. Claire: Is that for a bar? Charles: Uhhhh. No. That's a casket.

6. And finally, we form our band, The Tubercular Hacks, inspired by the lovely town of Kavre.

Sidebar: Entrepreneurial Kids

Hindu Temple In The Hills, Or: We Woke Up 430am For This?

1. Poems on trucks. Trucks on poems.

2. Wherein our heroes wade barefoot through rivers of blood.

3. Wherein we make yet another attempt to acquire Claire's lost bag. Attempting to bribe security fails. We take our issues up at the complaint desk.

4. Wherein we have a nice dinner in Thamel but learn the age-old adage of mixed drinks and countries that have no power for 16 hours a day (see: Notes On Brutality And Cultural Relativsim, Or: What's On The Drinks Menu)

Our House, Or: Todd and Sweetie Forever

Notes On Brutality And Cultural Relativism, Or: What's On The Drinks Menu?

Yubaker plays Nepali heavy metal music on his mobile phone as we bump along in a van through the dull, blue-grey dawn. It sounds like a low-fi Iron Maiden with the lead singer wailing in Nepali over whining guitars. Past the morning bustle of the Kalimati vegetable market, past an oddly anachronistic Playboy Whiskey sign. Up through the hills and trees – a soft and hazy approximation of the Santa Monica Mountains but with temples. Dammit, cold shower this morning cuz the generator wasn’t on yet when we got up at 430am and now winding and wending to a Hindu temple, we three vegetarians apprehensively expect that we just might witness the sacrifice of a goat. Go, Cultural Relativism, Go! That’s an abandoned cement factory, bombed-out and in a state of remorseless decay, and I can’t help but think again and again that this is not our past but our future. Blade Runner after the BOMB. (Note to self: Buddhist science fiction film). The buses and water trucks are decorated with righteous iconography and poems – poems writ large on a tanker truck! The impetus to write poetry on automobiles denotes a decidedly Un-Western perspective and in the villages women in saris shower in the open air and men in trousers and sweater vests brush their teeth at the side of the road. We drink sweet tea in a dirty parking lot. We breathe cold air that smells like campfire and sunbeams. We walk past the beggars and the vendors along the path to the hollowed ground. But Jesus Effing Christ the temple is wild and brutal! Barefoot on cold damp tiles and tika powder and – no joke – blood, yes BLOOD running across the ground and only the smell of burning incense, everywhere burning incense that bleats out the odor of so much death, and all the while Yubaker texting on his mobile. The music is nice when it whirls but… Where are the Buddhists? Or the Jains? Gimme my people cuz I can’t handle the liquid and the violence, I think I’m going to be sick, yet even in the face of redlined ritual, home is still a distant simulation. What’s the idea, here? I do feel sick. And then I feel sleepy. And we all wash our feet and maybe try not to think about it. Finally, today’s big lesson comes at dinner: NO POWER. NO BLENDER. NO COCKTAILS.

Maha Shivaratri, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Mob

1. Wherein the International Journalists cut the 8 hour long tika line.

2. Uh, yeah, it's half a million people. That's like at least 5 Coachellas in one. (Not kidding about the 8 hour long tika line)

3. Oh and some festies get trampled to death every year. This thing's crazy, man.

4. Yubaker proves to be hardcore as he boldly takes on five menacing, baton-spinning cops, wielding nothing but his bold diplomacy and quick wit.

5. Burning bodies. We're talking about effing BURNING BODIES. I mean, GD.

6. After the mobs and the smoke and the ash and the chanting and the haze and the nasty dirty river and the burning bodies (please see above) and the walk out to find a couple cabs and Todd's determination to make a liquor store mission, Charles says, almost an afterthought, "oh, see if you can pick up a nice Shiraz." We are in Kathmandu, dude.

7. Yet, Todd finds a nice Shiraz.

8. And Charles and Claire roll into the hotel restaurant half-drunk with an OPEN BOTTLE of the aforementioned Shiraz and two glasses, more declaring their intentions to the hotel staff then waiting for an answer ("okay if we bring this in?") and close the place down, I mean, until the the waiter drops some not-so-subtle hints re: their worn-out welcome.

Easy Scouting Day, My 6

1. Skip the easy scouting and go straight into the HEART OF DARKNESS, yeah JHC, we're talking moments from the drop zone and we are in-country, in the shit, shooting in the most insane market in the world.

2. Did we mention the camera is freaking heavy and Todd has to carry it everywhere? This is my camera, this is my gun, one is for shooting the other's for...

3. And...wherein we meet our guides. Yubaker and N... Neelam? Naleem. No, it's Neelam fersure.

4. We are so out of place that a guy in the back of a rickshaw takes a picture of us.

5. Lunch: wherein Claire and Charles read an enlightening article on Maha Shivratri.  And learn that festivities may include the piercing of the 12 (i.e. the business district) with a trident. And Charles vows that he's got Todd's 12 o'clock, uh like, forever.

Sidebar: New Terminology / Nomenclature

1. Dawny Fawn Eyes

2. Hobbyist Astrologist

3. Lightles

4. Big Hair Black Beard

5. The 12. Also: the 12 o'clock. I.e. the business district. I.e. the lingam. Ex: I've got your 12. Antonym: the 6, as in I've got your back - I've got your 6.

Travel Notes On Time Expansion

Keep moving, keep moving. Dramatically, intentionally. Unintentionally. Somewhere it’s tomorrow already. Might as well be here. Taipei to Bangkok. Hot hot weather. This is the Children Of Men for LA. Yes, Bangkok, the Los Angeles of the future. Reclining Buddha smiles sweetly for our cameras but security is none too pleased. The three Americans disappear. Quickly. No harm, no foul. Priceless boat ride on the river at sunset, who cares? with the wind in your hair and the low rent apartments on stilts and the kids swimming under a burning sky and amulets that can protect against everything and anything for just 50 baht. And then the night markets. What’s “pussy ping pong” anyway? If you don’t know, please don’t ask, just move on to Hong Kong and fog and hills and neon and 3am 7-11 missions complete with disposable underwear. What’s next? Kathmandu, which must be the noisiest Zen destination on the planet. Yes, Shangri-La is endless honking taxis. Dust. Exhaust. Passing bananas. A sparkle ahead is a Coca-Cola billboard. Eff it anyway, Disneyland hasn’t colonized just yet. Beautiful Hair Now – Life Can’t Wait says the next sign, though beautiful hair is the last thing on your mind. Scarves, face masks, loose clothes, and the Government Ministries building is ornate and white but stained like old dentures. The traffic circle must have been invented here, or at least reached its pinnacle in the haze of the Kathmandu Valley. This city feels like a chain of linked, chaotic, traffic circles. Did I mention there are no lanes, no stop lights? It’s the festival of Shiva, by the way, en route you pass the Terminal Café, which sounds like the name of a William Gibson novel, and maybe this place is more like a William Gibson novel than an antiquarian travelogue when DVDs occupy market stalls beside prayer flags and someone takes a digital picture of us from the back of a rickshaw. Chaos chaos chaos. Several hundred thousand people all festive, yeah, bearded, stoned, glassy-eyed, hollow-faced men smoking ganja, and pyres, yes burning bodies transcending this world, or whatever. Oh and time expansion, right? This is day four and I feel like we have been together for a month at least. How much raw, unmitigated, disparate, contradictory, visceral, vital and uncompromising life can you pack into a day? The more you experience the longer you live, innit? It’s not just the difference. Really really, it’s hardly the difference, babe, it’s the experience. And time slows, and time slows, and time slows, as we keep moving, keep moving, ever Westward. And if we feel everything then we are bound to something, eh? tied and true, or maybe tried and blue, and if we never stop we can outrun the pangs of the Modern World, I know it I just know it, walking awhile side by side by side at the far end of the map, just past the near future where time matters or doesn’t, yeah, just beyond the International Date Line.

Night 3 - Arrival in Kathmandu

1. The Hollywood Hills of Kathmandu

2. P2 card transfer in the glow of the candlelight.

3. Claire's haircut by flashlight

Day 3- Hong Kong uphill

shooting misty views of Hong Kong island from the Star Ferry
cranes in red, yellow and blue
Todd poses with Jackie Chan
A steep ride to Victoria Peak on the tram
Peak Security keeps hawking 3film (Charles puts on his disguise)
the scenic route back to Central
shooting on the escalators
Games & Fun pacman sign
bakery goods
Shooting from the train
eating at WildFire, so happy to have Wifi
passing out on the flight to Kathmandu

Day 2, Darkness Falls - Hong Kong Neon And Misadventures

Wherein our travelers have: A TOUGH NIGHT: the lost bag, the missing tripod, the dead battery, a failed P2 card and disposable underwear.

1. Foggy view from the Star Ferry
2. Fine Lebanese cuisine keeps spirits high
3. The dead battery
4. The failed P2 card
5. Neon lights at night
6. Top it all off with a trip to 7-11 at 3am: Claire buys a pack of disposable underwear, chocolate milk (brown box with a picture of a cow on it). Todd buys pizza flavored potato chips.

Bangkok Day 2 - We Didn't Get The Traffic Amulet

1. The amulet market - buying spiritual insurance for just 50 baht

2. Gods carved out of plaster

3. Airtrain overload, abort mission

4. An indescribable moment in the annals of street fashion
5. A nice musical interlude while drinking Lemongrass and Pandan (aka Fruit Loops Milk)

6. Shooting tuktuk to tuktuk

7. Missing the flight (effing traffic amulet), getting a new flight (thanks! airplane amulet!)

8. Welcome to sprinting through 5 shopping malls. By the way. This is your airport.

Bangkok Excursions Day 1 - Three Americans Take To The Temples And The Streets

1. Breakfast at Rickys Coffee Shop proves better than Job's Tears

2. Muay Thai training at Don King and George Foreman's favorite little Muay Thai place in Bangkok

3. The Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, wherein our "three Americans" narrowly evade arrest by unimpressed security guards with nasty walkie-talkie.
4. In a rush to hire a longboat at sunset, we rush past a baby elephant. Negotiating overpriced/priceless sunset boat trip:

5. Coke Zero in a glass bottle?!? When's this coming to the States?

6. Waitress outdrinks Todd with a bottle of Sangsom whisky-rum.

7. Apparently Claire is the prime consumer of "Pussy Ping Pong"

Bangkok Hotel Day 1 - No Room Pirates

1. Common Variety Racing Taxi, With Propane Tank

2. Please, No Prostitutes, No Room Pirates

 

3. Room Pirate In Residence

Taipei, Gateway To Tomorrow (And Beyond) - Yes, We Have Flight Attendant Action Figures