Saturday saw the return of AmCham incompetence and foreigner apathy, aided, I hope, mostly by AmCham's incompetence. It was billed as Halloweenies for the Kidz, or something like that. The idea was that "Hey! Let's get some food, booze, bands and that cozy park across from PJ's and make scads of money for, you know, the Kidz." It had to rock, being PJ's idea and all. From the kickoff at noon, with everyone checking their watches to make sure they all weren't 2 hours fast to the rockin' climax a few hours later with everyone checking their watches to see how much longer till 89K opened up, it was a hoot.

According to raffle tickets sold, about 110 people attended thoughout the 6 1/2 hours. Of course, there's no telling if people bought multiple tickets and of those that were sold, many were bought by people working the event. Hamburger patties went uncooked! YES, IT'S TRUE! Boxes of chicken legs were cooking themselves in the sunlight. South African sausage was being eaten by, well, of course, South Africans. BEER WENT UNDRANK! Read that again. No, yell it. BEER WENT UNDRANK. A mere $1,000 NT gave a person the right to pack your colon for a good two months on undigested flesh and all the beer you could drink. I estimate about 25 squads of draftees ( the elite Coronaistas and the more plebeian Harbinites ) went unused. They are currently quartered at Big Gay Lance's, waiting future deployment.

How did this happen? Well, PJ flew to the Philippines to consult a psychic surgeon about "the smell of rotting flesh" in his nose that has perturbed him since '86. Yes, really. Well, maybe not the psychic surgeon part, but he would find someone who would willingly perform a walletectomy. So PJ was not around to help round up the troops. But, he was. He condensed his 11 day sojourn into a single day and returned Saturday morning. For AmCham's part, all that needs to be said is that I've only seen two people from AmCham at any event, Jack McDowell, and Wayne Chen. And they are always there. Unfortunately, flyers were only distributed and put up two days before the event. Jack and Wayne cannot do it all by themselves. This is where the rest of AmCham stepped up, looked around and took a powder. Some are at odds with Jack and therefore thought it best to place personal differences above the benefit. AmCham Taichung is nonprofit. Basically they are a service organization of two. Two others, Jerry and Chris, who are not members ( Chris might be, but is not listed in the directory) , were asked to help. They did. So, that's it in a Ron Jeremy nutshell. One bright spot was the music. As usual they give their time - though I wish The Deported had not. One who should have been given all the time he wanted is Shane somebody from Tainan. He's from Saskatoon, plays mostly his own guitar and harmonica country. Hoping to get him to make the move here. See him if you get the chance.