William Horberg

The Macaque Monkeys of the Malaysian Bat Cave

Before my accident I was planning a post about ancient monkeys and steep steps.

Funny how in this new context these images seem a bit prescient, and even more relevant to share here with you now.

 

This wise old dude is part of a tribe of macaque monkeys who have made a home at the Batu Caves on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur for untold generations. Nimble and sure-footed, he and his pals scamper up and down the hundreds of steep steps to the entrance, dodging and flirting with tourists, climbing the walls or just sitting on top of a light globe and gazing out with an expression of endless serenity.

I've promised myself I'm going to get back there someday and walk those steps again on my reconstructed foot. These images will serve as an inspiration, and a reminder of how to roll, by some guys that are really light on their feet!

Enjoy!

william
 
 
 

 

 

How to Read A Malaysian Screenplay

I realize that some of you may have somehow gotten the false impression from my posts that it was all just fun and games over there in Malaysia - jumping off into the abyss, taking world-class painkillers, hanging out with the nurses on my ward and all - but that would be a mistake. 

Before my accident we actually did some serious work there and learned a lot about the local film scene.

Ahmad Idham is one of the most prolific and successful directors of Sinema Malaysia - the contemporary Malaysian film industry. 

A young man, he has already made something like twenty features as director and producer and often co-writer, which, as he explained when we visited his set in a nature preserve that housed an old-school style Malay village one evening, he films on a strict 20-day shooting schedule. Usually this means 20 straight days of filming, but once in a rare while he does allow his crew and actors an occasional day off, but only if the weather or locations demand it.

His work is exclusively horror genre films, often ghost stories steeped in local legend, myth and cultural traditions. His cast consists of young people in their 20's - the most popular boy and girl star in Malaysia today were filming the night we were there - but as Idham explains, the life expectancy for a star's career in cinema is quite short there, typically ten years more or less, and after thirty they have moved on to different careers as the audience has moved on to newer fresher faces.

Having myself worked on Hollywood films of full crew and huge scale and much lower budget independent films, I was still surprised and impressed by the economy with which Idham manages to organize his productions - even Roger Corman would be envious of this guy! 

With a crew of not more than 12 - 15 people who are all hired on a daily basis depending on the needs of the scenes to be shot that day, he shoots two or three takes at most of each camera set-up and often gets the work done in an 8 hour shooting day. But this was not a Dogma-style production made only with available light and a hand-held camera - there was a crane and dolly track and light stands and hair and make-up on set - it was just a very small crew doing multiple jobs who had worked together for a long time and operated with maximum efficiency to get a full-length 35mm film in the can for pennies.

Ahmad confessed to us one particular quirk of the Malaysian industry - the actors there get paid by the number of scenes they are in, not on a flat rate or a daily or weekly fee based on the number of days they work. 

As a consequence, savvy producers and screenwriters have developed a habit of writing long "omnibus" scenes in which different characters and story lines are all developed and advanced at once. Must make for an interesting read - a feature script with like 15 or 20 scenes in the whole movie. The director and script supervisor and editor all have to keep a keen eye on the coverage so these "all-in-one" scenes can later be repurposed and resequenced for the montage. 

I haven't seen any of these films yet, but I am curious to see if one would notice this unusual technique.

And I admire the scrappy spirit of an independent producer who has found an audience and carved out a sustainable niche within the economic scale of his local industry.

(The drawing is my poorly sketched copy of the dvd cover of one of Ahmad's horror flicks - the old shrunken head in a glass jar!)

Enjoy!

william

We Can Change The World

I think for many of us, the day where the unsustainable myth of our youth collides most directly and discordantly with what the poet Andrew Marvell called "time's winged chariot hurrying near" may be on that fateful day when our first born leaves for college.

"How is it possible?", we ask ourselves, that THIS: 

Became THIS:

 What fearful trick of computer graphic wizardry abetted this metamorphosis and collapsed 18 years into the blink of an eye?

As Miro goes off to college today, I can't help but flash back to my first day on campus, at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut in the Fall of 1976, our nation's Bicentennial year. 

It was a glorious East Coast Fall day, made even better when we finally slipped free of the hovering, anxious parents and step-parents and guardians who had delivered us to our dormitories. Disoriented yet drawn as if by magnetic force to the central quad, where some type-A tech geek with the world's largest set of speakers had arrived early enough to wire up his stereo and uncrate his vinyl in that pre-digital, pre-iPod era, and cranked up to 11 was broadcasting a high-fidelity recording of John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things" across the verdant expanse of frisbee-throwing and lacrosse-catching students.

The golden notes of the soprano saxophone solo seemed to shower down on the golden faces of my generation. I watched a blonde angel that my grandmother's generation would have called a "shiksa goddess" lugging her suitcase along the path, and later on, by coincidence, discovered that she was in my Russian Literature class where I nursed an unrequited crush on her while deciphering Gogol and Pushkin and Lermontov and self-identifying with the tortured Russian soul.

"These are a few of my favorite things" - la la la.

Back in my own dorm room while unpacking and settling in and trying to hide from and adjust to my gregarious and square roommate from Philadelphia and his Carol King and Carly Simon and Bread albums, I took out my flute and opened my window and ripped off some Lydian Chromatic scales and covered an Eric Dolphy tune in a vain and embarrassing attempt to assert my own nascent personality.

Of course a dogged-eared copy of Graham Nash's "Songs For Beginners" was also sandwiched somewhere in my own heavy case of record albums that I lugged from Chicago to Middletown back then, and as the kids and Elsa and I hugged Miro and said our goodbyes last night and watched him climb into his car and drive away for his own unique college adventure, maybe you could even faintly hear me humming those long ago anthems, to myself, and as my wishes for him.

"Be Yourself"

"We Can Change The World".

Rearrange the world. It's dying, to get better. Bon voyage, son.

Enjoy!

william

Keep Those Cards and Letters Coming!

I want to thank my readers and friends for all of their kind comments, well-wishes, flowers and gift-baskets in the wake of my accident and surgery. But most of all I want to thank my wife Elsa for her sacrifice and dedication to my home care and recovery!

Her most recent card which I found on my pillow last night at bedtime seems to perfectly express the generosity of spirit and selflessness which mark the true sentiment of this modern-day Florence Nightengale!

Enjoy!

 

william

The Hangover

Have you heard of P.R.I.C.E therapy? 

It stands for PROTECT, REST, ICE, COMPRESS and ELEVATE and it is part of my daily routine.

I'd call it "PRICELESS" for the relief it brings when my foot gets all crabby. 

Like the accoutrements of some morning-after drunk on an episode of "Mad Men", my ice bags have a certain period look and comical visual effect when tied off around my foot - I keep expecting to hear the voice of Phyllis Diller or Foster Brooks or Jackie Mason coming out from down there with some three-sheets-to-the-wind one-liners!

 

A neutron walks into a bar. 

"I'd like a beer" he says. 

The bartender promptly serves up a beer. 

"How much will that be?" asks the neutron?

"Since you’re a neutron?" says the barman, "no charge."

Enjoy!

william

 

Crutch Talk

I've spent so much time with these two guys I've started to wonder about the nature of their own conversations when I'm not listening!

Dear readers - feel free to supply your own dialogue between crutch one and crutch two for the word balloons in this one-panel gag. 

I'm sure you cut-ups out there can improve on my tepid effort above, and I'll enjoy whatever gags you contribute in my convalescence.

Thanks!

william
 

Sandokan

Have you ever heard of the Italian author Emilio Salgari?

As diverse a group of artists as Federico Fellini, Umberto Eco and Sergio Leone were all said to be fans of and heavily influenced by Salgari, who is the father of adventure, fantasy and science fiction genre writing in Italy.

I hadn't ever come across his work, but his most famous fictional character Sandokan,The Pirate of Malaysia was quite familiar to my brother-in-law Alex who watched his exploits on television while growing up in Cuba in the 1970's, and he came to Malaysia convinced that if he wasn't going to meet Sandokan there in person, at least he was going to find a large contemporary fan base there for this swashbuckling adventure hero that had captured his childhood imagination. 

Alas, not one person we met in Kuala Lumpur, not even the clerk at the local video store, had ever heard of S-A-N-D-O-K-A-N, and we couldn't find a copy of either the Steve Reeves-starring 1960's movies based on Salgari's books, nor the incredibly popular Indian tv series from the 1970's starring Kabir Bedi. 

The anti-imperial and anti-colonial themes of Salgari's pioneering genre fiction may have been popular in third world countries (Che Guevara is said to have read 63 of Salgari's books), but few Malay's of the 21st Century seem to be looking back at this fantasy character who embodied the spirit of revolt against the British and Dutch occupation and exploitation of their country.

 

Salgari himself had never been to Malaysia, nor to the Caribbean, nor the Wild West, nor any of the romantic spots of high adventure that provided the backdrop for his fantastic tales. Rejected as a naval officer, he never ventured further than the Adriatic Sea, but he was an avid consumer of foreign newspapers and magazines and maps that fed his imagination and inspired the voluminous output of this Italian peer of our own Edgar Rice Burroughs. 

But just as this "armchair adventurer" did not need to travel through the rain forests of Sarawak to live the vicarious life of a South Seas pirate, neither was a familiarity with his books or films required for me to take inspiration from his roguish hero - to project myself from my hospital bed and my crutches and wheelchair and painkillers to the fantasy realm of Salgari's 19th century jungles, where my disabilities disappeared and I too was wrestling tigers like SANDOKAN!

william

 

Laughter IS the Best Medicine

I'm so fortunate to have a brother-in-law with that particularly "cuban" sense of humor. He sees the funny side of life in every opportunity, and having him come over to Malaysia to support me at the hospital and help bring me home was the best thing I could have hoped for - even the surgeon Dr. Yong remarked how I seemed to perk up and start to regain my sense of humor once Alex arrived in Ricky Ricardo-style with his contagious enthusiasm.

 

 

Taking one look at my surroundings in the modern and well-appointed Prince's Court Medical Center in Kuala Lumpur, he immediately said "Mano, this is nicer than my place in Miami!" and asked the head nurse on my ward: "Hey, what do I have to do to get to stay here, too?" Without batting an eye she shot back: "Well, we offer plenty of plastic surgery options." "But I'm a young guy, what am I going to do with plastic surgery?" Alex asked. Peering closely at him, she offered him two options: "I DO see some lines around your eyes we could clean up. Or, how about a tummy tuck?" "But I only had one beer last night!" Alex wailed.

Alex enjoyed Malaysia so much that he finally became convinced that I must be faking my accident in order to stay there and receive special care, and this became a running gag between us all week. "You know, making it look like an accident is an art, brother, and you are one of the finest practitioners I know."

After a few days at the hospital, Alex turned to me with a serious expression on his face and said: "Mano, I'm having such a good time here, do you think we could take a look at the map and talk about where you are planning on having your next accident?"

I told him I was getting too old for the job, and it was probably time for me to retire, but that he was a young guy and could take one, or fake one, for the team, next time!

Proving that you don't have to be born in Cuba to have that cuban joking sensibility, when I got home yesterday Diego as usual got into the act and had the last word in humor. 

Fascinated with my crutches, wheelchair, ice-packs, boot and all the other paraphernalia of my injury, he tenderly and affectionately and in all sincerity said:

"Dad, can I break your other foot, too?"

According to an article about India's "Laughter Guru" in this week's The New Yorker, "true mirthful laughter can have a liberating, transformative effect - one that momentarily erases all practical concerns, fears, needs and even notions of time, and provides a glimpse into spiritual enlightenment." 

Thanks to my family of Cuban jokesters, I wholeheartedly agree!

william

Enter The Dragon

I've been really lucky to have great medical care here in Kuala Lumpur. My surgeon Dr. Yong is a young guy with the talent of a sculptor in reconstructing my heel and a sense of humor that gives him a great bedside manner.

He also adds a bit of local flavor to some of his medical advice at times.

Here is what he told me one day when he heard me huffing and puffing and clanging my way down the hallway corridor on my crutches.

"You sound like a choo choo train, William. You don't need to work so hard."

 

Thanks, Doc - a good mental image is worth a thousand words.

william
 

The Healing Cycle

Right now my foot and the rest of my body seem to be a bit at odds with each other, which is probably no surprise given the blame-game or credit-grabbing they are each involved with in regards to the accident.

Foot is like "took one for the team, dude".

Body is like "what the hell were you doing up here when you belonged down there?"

This simple illustration is the best way I can describe it.

 

When the foot is wrapped in the cryo-cuff or Ice Boot as Diego likes to call it, and propped up on a fluffed-up pillow, it is all chill and relaxed, but my body is aching to get out of bed and get vertical and moving.

When I'm up on the crutches working out like Mr. Pogo-Stick, my foot is hanging low and swelling up, and is like "you're going to pay for this ignominy".

Hence my daily routine consists of the healing cycle, since I've got to make nice with both constituencies as you can imagine!

In the immortal words of Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along?"

 

william