He always looked forward to the evening drives through the centre of Shanghai, this electric and lurid city, more exciting than any other in the world. As they reached the Bubbling Well Road he pressed his face to the windshield and gazed at the pavements lined with night-clubs and gambling dens, crowded with bar-girls and gangsters and rich beggars with their bodyguards. Crowds of gamblers pushed their way into the jai alai stadiums, blocking the traffic in the Bubbling Well Road. An armoured police van with two Thompson guns mounted in a steel turret above the driver swung in front of the Packard and cleared the pavement. A party of young Chinese women in sequinned dresses tripped over a child's coffin decked with paper flowers. Arms linked together, they lurched against the radiator grille of the Packard and swayed past Jim's window, slapping the windshield with their small hands and screaming obscenities. Nearby, along the windows of the Sun Sun department store in the Nanking Road, a party of young European jews were fighting in and out of the strolling crowds with a gang of older German boys in the swastika armbands of the Graf Zeppelin Club. Chased by the police sirens, they ran through the entrance of the Cathay Theatre, the world's largest cinema, where a crowd of Chinese shopgirls and typists, beggars and pickpockets spilled in the street to watch people arriving for the evening performance. As they stepped from their limousines the women steered their long skirts through the honour guard of fifty hunchbacks in mediaeval costume. Three months earlier, when his parents had taken Jim to the premiere of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, there had been two hundred hunchbacks, recruited by the management of the theatre from every back alley in Shanghai. As always, the spectacle outside the theatre for exceeded anything shown on its screen.
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Life's dirty. Life's unclean you know. It's birth, it's sex, it's the intestinal tract. One big squishy, unsanitary mess. It never gets any cleaner either. You know, dust to dust, worms crawl in, worms crawl out, right Even though we know that, we still walk the walk, we still live the life. We're like a bunch of little kids. Little kids, you know, we jump in this big old pond of mud and we're slapping it all over our face, rubbing our hair all down our backs and we're making these glorious, gooey, mud pies. That's us.
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Slow Dance
Have you ever watched kids On a merry-go-round? Or listened to the rain Slapping on the ground? Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight? Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?
You better slow down. Don't dance so fast. Time is short. The music won't last.
Do you run through each day On the fly? When you ask, 'How are you?' Do you hear the reply? When the day is done Do you lie in your bed With the next hundred chores Running through your head?
You'd better slow down Don't dance so fast. Time is short. The music won't last.
Ever told your child, 'We'll do it tomorrow' And in your haste, Not see his sorrow? Ever lost touch, Let a good friendship die Cause you never had time To call and say,'Hi?'
You'd better slow down. Don't dance so fast. Time is short. The music won't last.
When you run so fast to get somewhere, You miss half the fun of getting there. When you worry and hurry through your day, It is like an unopened gift... Thrown away. Life is not a race. Do take it slower. Hear the music, Before the song is over.
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I've always wanted to be able to teach Clippy what was annoying by slapping him around with the mouse cursor, just like those animals in Black & White.
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