There has been a lot of buzz about this Halloween video I did for the Brooklyn Paper in October of 08 and never edited or uploaded. Is it an insightful and entertaining review of a haunted house in brooklyn? Are there frights AND laughs? Are there lots of black kids making handjob gestures behind me while I use my razor sharp improv skills to conduct zany off-the-cuff interviews? The answer to all of these questions is, and must be, yes. Am I going to edit it and upload it this week? Unlikely. Feels unlikely. I’m probably going to put it off a while longer and spend most of my time watching tv, doing open mics and binge drinking. But here is my promise to my fans - I vow to have this video package on this site by NO later than Halloween of 09. So just sit tight a little longer, safe if the knowledge that it is worth the wait.

The proverb about it being just like riding a bike – you never forget how, turns out, that’s not steeped in fact. I learned how to ride a bike at 5 years old and gave it a solid ten year break before returning to it at 15. Now at 5, I had been something of a prodigy. We’re talking no hands, sometimes no feet. Yes, I was a wunderkind. But at fifteen, I couldn’t make it from my friend Sabrina’s house to the 7-Eleven for a round of white cherry slurpies without toppling over. I had squarely forgotten how to ride a bike. And I guess the old saying about you can’t go home again is the same kind of wrong. Because being in Thailand again feels just like going home. It is the same dirty heat. Mixed pungent smells, loud lyrical talking, wide smiling – all the familiar strangeness of home.

I spent the first few days hanging out with my family, getting massages and drinking mango margaritas by the pool. I met up with friends I hadn’t seen since I was 12. We all went out boozing, eventually bringing the party back to my parents’ hotel and swimming about in the pool. We got a human pyramid 4 stories high before the lot of us tumbled back into the deep end. We drank poolside into the early morning and they all made point to tell me that I’ve gotten way cooler over the past 13 years. Turns out my perm, glasses, braces days weren’t my most slick. I had to be excused from class twice in 7^th grade – once for getting my glasses caught in my braces (somehow) and the second time for getting my legs caught in a chair while attempting to sit in it backwards, real cool like. I had to be sawed out.

What was my point? I’m a little loopy because I’ve been struck by a Thai mega cold and the only medicine they had the corner store was called “brown mixture.” Aptly named. And also pictured above.

So I flew into Phuket 3 days ago. It has been pretty much all business since I got here. Tons of bouncing back and forth between the Sunshine Village, the Phuket Town Elementary School, the Holland Safe House and Uncle Pitak Child’s Care Facility. Uncle Pitak is interesting. Turns out in Thailand, if you are a lady and you get arrested they just bring your kids to jail with you if they are under 5 years old. And then your kids grow up in a jail for a few years. Well the jails didn’t have the means for caring for young kids – milk, toys etc. So they asked Phuket Child Watch if they would donate a few things. Phuket Child Watch offered to do them one better and set up a child care facility, Uncle Pitak, to watch over the kids during the day. So I filmed some of that. Those kids seemed sad. I taught them the hokey pokey – they looked at me like I had a learning disability but I was committed to the project. And I also taught them duck, duck, dog (I didn’t know the word for goose in Thai), which they like a good deal more.

Today I filmed disk jockey classes held at the Elementary School for under-privileged kids as part of a mobile education program. Because yeah – there is a huge need in Thailand for hundreds of new D.Js, super practical program. In fairness, it may not be practical but the kids were having a blast.

And then at Sunshine Village – Jesus Christ, it is just heart melting. The kids are tiny smile machines. It is what everyone means when they say cute. And they bombard me whenever I get low enough that they can throw their arms around my neck. I’ll end up with eight little kids tugging at me and I’ll lose my balance and sit hard against the ground and the kids laugh and laugh. They love looking through my camera. It is a battle getting decent footage with all the kids struggling to be in the spotlight and shoving themselves right up against the screen but I’ve managed to sneak a few lovely candid moments.

With the prison day care and Sunshine Village material combined I’ve already got enough footage of orphans crying to get me at least a nod at Sundance. I may not know anything about Sundance but I do guess it is a whole bunch of nodding.

The only possible downside of filming at Sunshine Village is that I almost certainly will get lice if I haven’t already contracted it. I filmed a great sequence today of the “moms” at Sunshine Village combing giant Thai super lice out of the heads of 4 or 5 cute ass little kids I’d been playing heartily with yesterday. So be it.

Lindsay left today and I did all the filming and traveling about on my own. Jumping on a motorcycle taxi with all my camera equipment and tripod felt pretty neat. With my smart shorts and dirt-darkened t-shirts I felt like the Jane Goodall of filming Thai orphans. And no – I couldn’t think of more racist parallel. Oh wait, I just thought of one – but I don’t like it.

I’m trying not to get all la di da about it, but I do feel a little extra alive right now. Being in this colorful, wild, brilliant country – focusing on a consuming task that is all my own and that I love. I guess I’m just having a really good time.