Marvel Unveils Mysterious "Trifecta" Teaser

It was the Fan Expo at Toronto.

A Trifecta of Images.

Elseworlds? What-if? Who cares?

They sure look cool as hell.

ANOTHER MEMORIES

Sometimes it just happen.

Walk into Kino the other day and picked up Memories by Bilal. Swore can't find this anywhere else I tried. Not even online order. Took me a while to actually read it but Starbucks and Kenya did the trick. Also it was the Starbucks at the end of the Garden. Lots of desperate situation where desperate people/non-people cling on to power or whatever is left of it. The results is often annihilation. Nothing new here.

Walk into this anime shop as a second thought at Midvalley and picked up Otomo's Memories. Unbelievable. That is so unreal. The last time I peek at Memories was 1999. Then it was a badly spun vcd with no stop function. Go figure. Never seen Otomo's Memories anywhere else. Swore never even tried to find it subconsicously. There I was with Memories in dvd. No difficulty in popping in the disc for a massive full viewing. No difficulty in letting anime images of sci-fi darkness beat my mind into pulp. No. No difficulty at all. Otomo did Akira. Now Otomo has blasted my mind to slush. I can't be thankful enough.

*That's superior film craft yew suckers!

PAUL DUFFIELD: BIG GUN!

To blow 'em up!

To blast 'em till kingdom come!

To let 'em eat shit and die!

To annihilate!

To destroy!

To let ripppppppped!

- the BIG MEAN GUN.

Paul Duffield - words are not necessary when you have a BIG MEAN GUN.

Eat shit and die.

One reason why communications fail is because there's too much talking. Too much reasoning. Too much impressing. Too much meaning. Too much jamming. Too much soup. There's too much talking and too little understanding.

www.freakangels.com

MEMORIES: KL

I had coffee with BILAL. I asked him to peek into my mind.

He saw strange creatures with stranger expression.

He said something in french, I allowed him.

This he drew from memories once forgotten.

potrait of tuition teacher as gaiman

I asked Bilal to reveal the farce/face of the one called Sumo then called Dukes then named Big Mac. He painted a Gaimanish feature shadowed by cookie monster who looks in need of sleep. Badly. The potrait revealed little. But it ask a lot. Is it after all a dude storyteller beneath that gobbling blue monstrosity? Is it a shaman conjuring tales unseen from the netherworld to spew forth from one so grosteque in blue collar horror? Is it the dream of monster who dreamt that he/it/was gaiman? Is it gaiman dreaming he was a blue monster? Is it after all just a dream from the smokes of the shesha pipes?

Portrait of La Tey as liberated

I asked Bilal to unravel the enigma of La Tey. He drew a scarf blood red and billowing in the wind. He drew the liberation of flight. He almost re-imagined the son of Krypton but reveal one going against the wind. Is it one going forward then? Is it one held back? Is it one with great determination to go against the wind? Is it one drawn to be hindered by the blood red scarf instead? There is only the silence the scarf held with no sound uttered but only the partial answer of a face with the eyes closed.

I asked Bilal if he will drew me from a distance. He obliged. I stood outside the hotel ready to depart. He captured me in transition. Sometimes that is all I can be.

MEMORIES

SPACE. It says how small man is. In the vacum of darkness where one can only believe one's own lies, the truth is ONLY a safety cable that attaches oneself from floating to oblivion. It's a thin line between small lies and the expanse of space.

DARK. It says man has to grope in order to know what's ahead. In the small world that man has created to call his own, there's no need to venture far out. One can create spiral paths that lead back to oneself. No need for a lamp to light the feet, nor a light for paths that go forth.

MEMORIES. Time was life was lived in struggle. Time now, life can be effortless.

There's a world painted by Bilal that shows people desperately wanting power. Power to control. To control whatever little that is left to control, like controlling the robots that served their daily means. People will cling on to that. That power that give them reason for being. Over a few miserable scrap of metal and wires you say? People will cling on to anything for the fiction of being in power. When the world is a badly painted ochre of decay, Bilal shows that people will desperately want power.

It's a small world in the sci-fi of Bilal. Only our fantasy make them large. It's a small world that enagage our attention, it's only our ignorance that narrow our focus to the vastness of space out there.

Meanwhile, the path that spirals is one that is tread on.

In space no one can hear you scream.

THE ROCK SHAMAN

No excuse not to study history. Jim Morrison, the lizard king. He can do anything.

Jeremiah Redux

"Jeremiah Blues" exist. It's somewhat like "Fight Club". Only "Lite"-er, decaffeinated, detoxed and Rated-PG (parents-need-guidance). Much of Jeremiah Blues doesn't make sense to anyone outside the Inner Circle of this insidious fraternity (truth be told, much of it doesn't even make sense to the Inner Circle of this insidious fraternity). Therefore, if you don't find anything useful here, please just move on. Go check out Hollywood Babylon if you're interested in porn. There's no porn here. In fact, the Inner Circle is very anti-porn because we once did a study on how it had zero effect in encouraging Pandas to copulate. Now, panda-extinction is a very real issue and panda-porn used to be presented as the cure for the apparent lack of sexual interest among the cuddly bears. Apparently, it had about as much effect as Jack Black's animated feature had in encouraging pandas to take up kung-fu! But for some reason, some weird SIN fundy (usually going by stupid Latin-sounding names like Vincit) actually think that there's a lot of porn here. There's no use reasoning with SIN fundies. They are even less sexually interesting that panda-porn. Anyway, my point is this: if you've had a healthy childhood playing Nintendo, watching Cartoon Network and fantasizing about aborted foetuses, then you'll probably find little here to interest you. In fact, you may even find Jeremiah Blues rather confusing. Some people actually said that we're writing/posting utter rubbish here. Not too far from the truth, I must admit. But then, so was James Joyce...

Last Saturday was an actual off-line, in-the-stinking-flesh gathering of the Inner Circle of the Jeremiah Blues fraternity. Aside from the usual discussions on the aesthetic qualities of European artists against the conveniently-sequential kitsch of American ones, we also ordered an indecent amount of food like normal, ordinary human beings. [Melvin provided the sound bites.] In other words, we had "dim-sum" at a local restaurant while talking about the state of local politics, history, art, philo-loco-sophy, theo-loco-gy and other really deep, introspective shit by the usual gang of idiots. [Melvin provided the sound bites.] The interesting thing about the live-meeting (performance?) was that if any casual bystander stood by and listened in, he/she would have absolutely no idea what we were talking about at all. Never mind that. Most of the time, we couldn't even understand what we ourselves were talking about. [Melvin provided the sound bites.] La Tey was fast asleep after the 20th hour. Pltypus and I were still going on and on and on. We ran out of topics and actually went into therapy (with Pltypus charging RM80 a pop). [Melvin provided the sound bites.] Shesha smoke was in the air, in our lungs and in our heads. That kept us awake. The shesha-man gave a lecture on how the shesha-pipe worked. We should probably invite him to chair future Jeremiah-meetings. Nobody could understand a word he said!!! But we all nodded in agreement anyway. [Melvin provided the sound bites.] My point (and I do have one) is this, the Inner Circle of the Jeremiah Blues fraternity is identical in real-life as they are in blog-life. Deep and nonsensical at the same time. But then, so was James Joyce.....

In some ways, Jeremiah Blues was about the struggle for independence. We had our little Boston Tea Party and decided that enough was enough. Some centuries down the line, historians will pore over every word that we've written down here and conclude that we were right in the midst of a revolution - heck, that our names will forever be linked to the greatest revolution ever in human history. But that is to be expected. Uncle Screwtape was said to have memorized "Ecce Homo" on his way to the school lavatory one day when he was in Primary Three. As for La Tey, he was said to have discovered the truth behind all existence in some weird S&M ritual involving a hammerhead-shark in latex and an electric-drill customized according to the diameter of one of his orifices that I will refrain from mentioning lest I offend the sensibilities of some of our more tender readers. As for Pltypus, he saw the light after the 58,239th viewing of "The Deer Hunter" and "Blade Runner" side-by-side on his TV screen and notebook LCD screen. It was said that his experience was akin to an epiphany and he finally figured out the real motives behind Rutger Hauer's mysterious actions saving Han Solo at the end of the movie. Pltypus was last seen sitting silently below the Virgin (probably the only Lady that could make him shut up). As for Melvin? Well, he provided the sound bites and we all love him for that. I don't know about James Joyce. I was told that he once made some list that provided him instant Nirvana. The list went something like that:

Stephen

Dublin

Ireland

World

Universe

God

Universe

World

Ireland

Dublin

Stephen

Wanna join up?

Jeremiah Blues is open for enrollment.

So you say you want a revolution?

CAFE SUMATRA

PROLOGUE: I am at Starbucks on a pisspour day. The only reason I'm at Starbucks is because there's no Old Town Coffee and Plaza Low Yat is miles away. But there's free wifi here and except for myself there's only one more laptop in the other corner.

Time was people fight for coffee

COFFEE & STUFF
Friend of mine at Starbucks asked me if I have a blog. I told him I am part of the Jeremiah's collective. A cult? he asked. Nah, just a bunch of pseudo-literary-socio-linguine-high falooting-philo-historico-bullshittin-bunch-of-assholes with nothing to do. He said I am writing rubbish. No disagreement. It shit. And it's the blues. Nice day to drink cofee. Today serving is Sumatra - full bodied brew. Yesterday I was at the Starbucks at the end of the universe in Midvalley. The Starbucks that don't want to be found. Tuck inside the corner of Borders, Garden. They were serving Rwanda. Rwanda, the land of genocide. Time now, Rwanda is the flavor of the month.

HISTORY UNLEARNED
In another joint where great steaming old school coffee are served, I met Dukes. and La Tey. and the techno remnant Warlock. Dukes, he's now the punisher. He's wrestling with kids and telling them the new old history of what has became now. Time was Tambirajah was the dude with the notes. I devoured the F1 to F3 syllabus like history was the new agenda for the generations of tomorrow. Then came the F4... Effeminate boys who can't sing but have hair bangs and acne proof skin. Here history ends. Mass prepubescence swooning occured among asians females who never studied the history of Robert Plant. They were all conned into thinking that Jerry and the boys were actually desirable. Time was, Plant was squuezing the lemon till the juice ran down his legs... I mean whoa! F4 as History? They WERE history as soon as they appeared on the scene. Teeny pop has a short life span. History today is all blind reading and even if kids today actually read, stuffs like Led Zep legend remains unread and consigned to certain memory graveyard. Only those who remembered can still say "Squuuuueeeeeeze me Babeeee!!!" So back to Dukes and his history class. Hope the kids make the score in their exams.

Hippo sightings in KL

HIPPOS IN KL
"I am the lizard king, I can do anything" Where there's total freedom to be, there's no guilt in being. (Jim Morrison, The Doors.) I used to read the free expression of the rock shaman and played THE END with all the lights out. Letting images of the subconscious encroach the waking reality of the darkened room. All juvenile stuff from the imaginations of a youth liberated from the chains of structured learning. When you are young and stupid, anything is permissible. When one become older with ageing and regulations, the limits are more thickly drawn. Structured behavior began with the age of education. One learns to step in line and follow the classroom decorum. One learn the syllabus and follow the instructions. One come under the figures of authority who implant following behavior. One become the crowd who follows. One learn guilt. One become sin conscious. One dies.

So every now and once comes a Morrison who defies convention and awakens a passion once forgotten. Dukes knows passion unbridled. La Tey is a walking sperm donor. Warlock is just waiting to ejaculates. (He just need to find the right soundbites.) Beyond the appearance of farce, Walt Disney's Fantasia explodes on the wide screen. Most of us were still wet in the nose but who can forget the dancing hippos with their tu-tus? History was written on that day. One, classical music is cool. Two, fantasy need not just be dragon and dungeons. Three, hippos do dance. Go ahead, let the shaman feed your dreams. While Dukes waltzes his way into hippo-fantasia-ballroom-arkana. (If Dukes can appear as the punisher, it's not difficult to imagine Dukes in pink tu-tus.)

The tuition teacher once known as the punisher now re-imagined as a hippo in tu-tus

EPILOGUE: It still pisspouring outside.

Crazy Geography

Had fun teaching Form 3 Geography today. Last day of the Intensive Classes. Students were stoned out of their brains already. As for me, I was so exhausted after an entire week of wrestling with the terror-toddlers at the other center that it was like a breath of fresh air taking a class of hormone-fried adolescents. We discussed Greenwich Mean Time, weed in Amsterdam, the wonders of shesha, liberal parenting, National Population Growth, how-to-be-a-pirate, and why birth-control methods are frowned upon by institutionalized religion! I devoured 1/4 pounds of beef (if you believe McDonald's advertising for their Quarter Pounder) for lunch and had a business meeting with my boss.

La Tey wrote to me and we both had a good time laughing at Pltypus' machismo-act (funny thing is, we're pretty damned sure that he's laughing at us at the same time). La Tey is also on a marathon. He's watching "Nip/Tuck" like his eternal soul (whatever is left of it) depends on it. Never mind that he's 4-5 years late as usual. What's important is the obvious passion he's exhibiting over this mind-fuck of a series. Honestly, I'm still of two minds over this newly liberated version of La Tey. In truth, this is probably the true La Tey - just buried underneath after years of mental-conditioning by evangelical fucks like "The Navigators". Maybe he's really finding himself now through the labyrinth of sexual liberation and the lessons learned from Amsterdam, Berlin and Bangkok. Perhaps that's why my "Xavier Syndrome" (don't ask!) doesn't even surprise him in the slightest. Note: This is the state of affairs at Jeremiah's. When we're not laughing at SIN fundies, we're busy laughing at each other. One of my colleagues asked for the URL to my blog some weeks back. He started reading some of the entries here and couldn't make sense of anything. He gave up. We're still friends. But he probably thinks I'm crazy anyway. That's ok. I wasn't expecting him to accompany me to fight Sauron in the Land of Mordor anyway. Not entrusting my life in his hands anytime soon.....

Nothing fazes me today. It's a beautiful day and it's raining outside. I'm looking forward to the weekends. Reading Wen Rui-An's novels (my Chinese is getting rusty, really!) and excited about my family vacation next week... :)

Postscript: Check out my student, Melsa Tan'er's blogs. She's a really cool girl who plays a mean Ovation guitar and sings like a fallen angel.

Teenage Wasteland

Teenagers with problems. Teenagers with superpowers that set them apart from the rest of humanity - thus amplifying their problems to the Nth-degree. Sounds familiar? If you've grown up reading "X-Men" (like me), it should and Brian Wood knows that. Wood takes the best of the teenage-angst of Claremont's malfunctioned mutant teenagers and recycles them into 12 short-stories elegantly illustrated by Becky Cloonan into a book called "Demo". The result is not a comic or even a graphic novel (I hate that pretentious nomenclature). It works and feels like an alt musical album with 12 tracks, each one illustrating a particular emotion: acceptance, support, loneliness, escape, lust, love, pain, etc. I read "Divided We Stand" two weeks ago and that was something like that (vignettes or snapshots of characters) but without the magic of Cloonan's art. Cloonan channels the best of Paul Pope, Frank Miller and Guy Davis with a mixture of manga into her work, creating a deeply personal album to cherish for many, many years and rereads to come. By the end of the book, I was screaming: "Mum, when I grow up, I want to marry Becky Cloonan!" Well, not exactly in those words but you get the point... :)

Mental Enema

Some years back, I saw this Hong Kong movie called "Ebola Syndrome". It was Anthony Wong at his sickest and most perverse. "Human Pork-Chop Buns" was nothing compared to this classic of cinematic gore and exploitation. It left me shivering. The horror wasn't just limited to the sick acts of one demented individual. The horror was that I was sharing the world with sick fucks like this. Now, before you go sniggering at my naivety, all that was pre-"Hostel", pre-"Saw" and long before I discovered sicker fucks who post pictures of aborted foetuses on their blogs in order to make put forth a moral argument. But that was that. Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was this tiny shit-of-an-excuse-for-a-TPB called "Bad World" by Warren Ellis. During my saner (more sanctified?) days in Ipoh, I discovered the single issues but did not buy them. Yesterday, I browsed through the miscellany handed to La Tey by Pltypus and discovered this buried treasure (or travesty, depending on my state of mind at the moment). Pltypus called it "bits and pieces of a work in progress culminating in Crooked Little Vein". I believed him (although I put forth my usual look suggesting intellectual-skepticism). He was right, as usual (and don't ask for the 80 bucks this time, ok?). "Bad World" was a cheap exercise wherein Ellis dumped in all the stuff that a writers' notebook of research contains with nary a thread to tie them all together into a cohesive narrative. It's not a story so much as it is a shopping list of weirdness. Garth Ennis probably owns the same writers' notebook but he at least bothered to write cohesive storylines with engaging characters around his weird-shit (e.g. "Preacher"). Not so with Ellis. Ellis was running an e-mail self-promotion campaign ("Bad Signal" - another Avatar TPB), an online site (again for self-promotion), writing endless self-promoting essays ("From The Desk Of..." - another Avatar TPB) while flirting shamelessly with the superhero-publishing companies (read: Marvel/DC) that he supposedly abhors. Ellis is, first and foremost, a businessman. And the product that he sells is, simply, himself. He noticed the cult following of other writers like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison and set himself up to be just such a comic-guru. This is not meant to be a criticism. In fact, it's a long tradition in the literary business. Robert Heinlein comes to mind. So does Clive Barker, Robert Ludlum and countless others. Hacks who pattern themselves after greater writers. When speaking to fans of indies, Ellis trumpets his hatred for the superhero-monoliths of Marvel/DC (all the while explaining that the paychecks he receives from them were to finance his forays into indie-publishing). When speaking to fans of the superhero genre, Ellis maintains that he's only trying to take the book/concept further than was previously thought possible and/or writing a homage to great imaginative writers of the past. Don't believe him. It's all about money to buy stuff for his girlfriends so that he'd get to bone them. Once again, nothing inherently wrong or immoral about all that. Back to "Bad World". It's a writer's notebook culled from years of research into manic-obsessive idiots we share the world with (religious nuts, serial killers, cannibals, lizard-fuckers, insane scientists, politicians, etc.) pretending to be a comic. The illustrator of this piece, Jacen Burrows, does all the work illustrating some random notes that Ellis tossed his way. Avatar publishes it and made some money from Ellis' rabid fans. For Ellis, it was free money anyway. He didn't even need to think up this stuff. Throw the notebook to an artist and Avatar will publish it. Avatar publishes anything anyway. It's not as if they're trying to achieve any modicum of respect here. Remember the sex-and-gore shit they published in the 1990s ("Faust", "666", "Razor", etc.)? Heck, they were the ones who made the nude-variant covers into collector's items! Avatar is like the most overused whore working the street corners for scraps under the table. "Bad World" is one such scrap under Warren Ellis' table. Avatar took it, licked it clean, slapped it between two colourful covers and it ends up in my fat, grubby hands. Having said all that, I must admit that it is an intriguing read. It's not exactly a comprehensive conspiracy theory in the David Icke manner but maybe that's why it works. Ellis doesn't try to sell us a system of beliefs about alien reptiles invading earth and disguising themselves as "the powers that be". Nope. He simply gives us snapshots of weird fucks all over the world who tries to clone Jesus from the Turin Shroud, eats their French girlfriends and fucks Godzilla. Then he reminds us that this is OUR world. Not the world that we read about in the news or watch in mainstream movies certainly. But real nevertheless. It's stuff like this that reminds me why I've always hated the naivety of songs like Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World". It's a Bad World. We share this Bad World with these sick fucks. Some of these sick fucks end up as political leaders who blow up dead bodies or are addicted to sodomy. Some end up calling for a war against "evil nations", "evil ideologies" and "evil leaders". Some end up as religious leaders. Some write blogs and post up pictures of aborted foetuses while welcoming the IMF to fuck their nations in the ass. It's a Bad World and maybe Stryfe the Chaos-Bringer was right. Let's blow these motherfuckers to kingdom-come, let God sort them all out and reboot the world. But I digress. In the end, it's only a comic. Intriguing, nonetheless, but still a badly written one published by a whore of a publisher. This is why I prefer reading "Cable And The New Mutants" .....

The Cover That Launched A Thousand Remixes

Pltypus handed a shitload of comics that he'd read, laughed and ejaculated over to La Tey in SIN. La Tey was tasked with the handling and delivery of some of them to me over the weekend in KUL. I specifically requested for the volume entitled "Cable And The New Mutants". That, to me, was the Holy Grail of Comics. It contained the first appearance of the man called "Cable" as drawn by Rob Liefeld and scripted by a pening-pening lalat girl called Louise Simonson. It the the most godawful ugly comic in the history of the universe and I loved it more than I loved my grandmother. Furthermore, it contained THIS cover:

"New Mutants" was created by Chris Claremont in the 1980s to introduce the next generation of mutant students at Xavier's. It was a sweet little book that fans liked - somewhat like an answer to the ever-darkening teen-heroes of Marv Wolfman's (post-"Judas Contract") "Titans" over at DC. Aside from some experimental art by Bill Sienkiewicz (another Pltypus-favourite), it was a title that tried too hard to go against the grim-and-gritty waves flooding 80s/90s comics. In short, it was a title that was destined to fail in the long run. Then Marvel had an inspiration. DC's "Titans" had Deathstroke the Terminator (known to kids today as "Slade" because of the cartoon) so we'll darken the "New Mutants" title with "The Man Called CABLE!!" (the two exclamation points are infinitely important from the standpoint of literature, as you'll soon realize). Enter: ROB LIEFELD and the infamous cover above: New Mutants #87. It was inked by then rising-star Todd McFarlane, who'd go on to greater success on "Spider-Man", "Spawn" and slews of violent action-figures. Liefeld, on the other hand, went on to even greater financial success (and infamy) with "X-Force", "Youngblood", "Bloodsport", countless other books with "Blood" or "Die" or "Kill" in their titles, the Heroes Reborn "Captain America", "Supreme", some Biblical books (or should that be "unbiblical books"?), some stuff involving Will Smith's wife and the Backstreet Boys, legal battles with Marvel over "Fighting American", and err... Levi's Jeans! But he was doomed to never exceed the artistic-excellence (?!?) that he once achieved on "New Mutants #87". Hence, like all other one-hit wonder rockstars, he'd return again and again and again to it, remixing it sometimes, rehashing it at other times...

Take for example, the cover above. "Youngblood #5" was actually the fifth issue of the relaunched series - probably the second or the third such relaunches. By then, Liefeld had largely abandoned his Image books - he was having law-suits with BOTH Marvel and Image at the same time. Probably his only joy was getting an opportunity to draw "Captain America" despite the fact that even that work was largely panned by critics. Around that time, Liefeld contributed the cover above. It was meant as a homage - a parody even - of the original cover he did for "New Mutants #87". This time with a Cable-lookalike called "Jeriko" (I don't remember anything else about the character). "Jeriko" was really another Cable-lookalike in a long string of duplicates during the 1990s. Characters with shiny limbs, eyes, lined-constipated faces and gigantic guns were on every cover of every title anyway! In time, Liefeld returned to do another run on "Cable" (by "run", I really mean 2-3 issues), another run on "Wolverine" (again, I really mean 1-2 issues), a complete run on a "Cable and X-Force" miniseries (this time, he did the whole thing with partner-in-crime Fabian Nicieza), covers for the "Shatterstar" mini (by his friend Marat Mychaels - Liefeld was co-plotter), covers for "Cable/Deadpool" (by Fabian Nicieza) and the "Onslaught Reborn" mini (with Jeph Loeb, his former partner at "Awesome").

The latest rehash/remix of "New Mutants #87" is the above "Marvel Apes Variant Cover" for "Cable #6" (another relaunch of the character/title after the cataclysmic events of "Messiah Complex" with no involvement so far from Liefeld aside from the above cover). Can anyone say "Constipated Apes"??? Hahaha! I love Rob's work. I also love his self-deprecating humour (nobody laughs at Rob Liefeld's work more than Rob himself - honest!). I love his in-your-face artwork and his constant self-parodies. Pick up a Rob Liefeld comic for some honest-to-God fun and action. No need for social/political commentaries or lit.crit. analyses. Enjoy... :)

Links:

• "THE MADNESS OF CROWDS" or "WHY IS ROB LIEFELD LIKE A TULIP BULB?"
• The 40 Worst Rob Liefeld Drawings
• Rob Liefeld: Any More Questions?

Shesha With Friends

Four blokes met over the weekend for talks on liberation, angst, comics, art, technology, books, church, food, Oprah, and history. We also had shesha and salted-Coca Cola. Good times. :)

In attendance were Pltypus, La Tey, Melvin and yours truly. Some said that pagan gods were looking down on us (outside the panels). Pltypus hated them and complained that their presence were "too convenient". La Tey was fast asleep but apparently heard every word spoken! Yours truly marvelled at the Angst-less Pltypus who is at peace with many things (though he charges a virtual 80 bucks for every virtual counselling session). Melvin provided the sound-bites, drove us around and took photographs. Somewhere in de olde England, Warren Ellis had an orgasm because we deconstructed his writings on lizard-love. Like I said, good times...

Postscript: Back to work today. Recovering from three sleepless nights and too much lizard-loving...

A Chinese Tall Story

Performed at Joe Hisaishi Asian XTC Concert 2006. 久石譲コンサート2006.

This is the heartachingly beautiful and haunting themesong from the movie. Enjoy. :)

Busy - Busy - Busy

Not a parody of Vincit this time. I really am busy with exams. Trying to complete my TESOL Assignments as soon as possible while coping with work, placement tests, classes, etc. Furthermore, La Tey and (hopefully) Pltypus will be visiting KUL this weekend. Haven't seen them for a while. Looking forward to meeting them both.

"We Have All The Time In The World"

George Lazenby is my favourite Bond. Just watched an old, jerky version of "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". It's not just the best Bond film I've even seen, it's one of the best films ever! Daniel Craig is struggling to capture the "humanity" of Bond but Lazenby did it so effortlessly that he literally swept the floor with the cardboard caricatures of Connery's, Moore's, Dalton's and pretty-boy Brosnan's performances. Louis Armstrong's "We Have All The Time In The World" played during the romance-scenes between Lazenby and Diana Rigg made the movie that much sweeter and that much more heartbreaking because we all know how it ends, don't we?

Here's another version by a 12-piece tribute band.

How I Learned To Love The English-Speaking Peoples

Sometime ago, we examined whether the creation of certain fictional costumed do-gooders (for instance, Captain America) came with a jingoistic motivation to represent the Anglo-Americans in a positive light while conversely painting the Reds and Germans in ugly, dark hues. The conclusion was that, those particular characters can be enjoyed for what they are even if one had little love for the nationalistic concerns behind said characters. In fact, I have been informed that an average issue of a "Captain America" comic actually sells better in Germany than in North America! Perhaps this is not so surprising because those books are read primarily for the entertainment, the humour, the ridiculousness of costumed adventurers and the romance of it all (showcased by the stellar writing/art talents of Jim Steranko, Jack Kirby, Mark Waid, Ed Brubaker, Steve Epting and company). Not so history books. History books are not primarily meant to be entertaining. They are meant to firstly inform, then to shape opinions. It can be said (and has been said, most frequently by my friend Pltypus) that there really is no such thing as "objective history". Even an idiot like Dan Brown knows that and actually made hundreds of millions by reminding the world that "history is written by the victors". In other words, there really is a motivation behind historians to indoctrinate their readers with certain beliefs, nationalistic interests, etc.

I was in Times Bookshop, The Pavillion yesterday morning hunting for British history books when I encountered this monster-sized one-volume tome entitled "A History Of The English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900" by Andrew Roberts. It is an ambitious work that attempts to serve as a sequel to the four-volume work by Sir Winston Churchill ("A History Of The English-Speaking Peoples") that traced the histories from their humble beginnings up to January 1st, 1900. Roberts' opinion (which I do share) is that the best and most exciting history of the English-speaking peoples actually BEGAN from January 1st, 1900 rather than ended there. What was "the future" to Churchill is now our "past", seeing as how we have the luxury to examine it from where we are now in 2008. I grabbed the book, headed down to the food-court, gobbled down a beef-pie and started reading. I find much to agree with in the book. There should be no question whatsoever that we cannot understand much about the previous century (or our present, for that matter) without a careful examination of the importance of understanding the English-speaking peoples. In fact, however much we hate to admit it (as I believe readers of Chomsky do), the previous century really must be defined as the Century of the English-Speaking Peoples.

Having said that, Roberts' book is largely flawed. To put it more succinctly, the strengths of the book are also its weaknesses. Roberts go to no small lengths to prove the "greatness" of the English-speaking peoples (UK, US, Australia and Canada - but excluding Ireland, because of their seeming addiction towards self-flagellating regression) and ended up sounding so jingoistic as to sometimes be a turn-off! There is no question that there is much to laud, to applaud even, about the achievements of the English-speaking peoples. I would even go so far as to ascribe a certain undeniable greatness to them. But to read a 800-page defense of their "Manifest Destiny" can be a little too much to take. Perhaps the solution is to read this volume with the other book that I mentioned in an earlier post (An Utterly Impartial History Of Britain) within convenient reach so as to counter the heady-optimism. I often think that the best histories are those that make us critical of ourselves, our nations, our culture. Roberts' self-congratulatory tone throughout makes the book sound, at times, like a ridiculous religious tract written by blind-adherents rather than a work worthy of a true historian. Having said that, the breadth, the ambition and the obvious passion of the author is to be applauded. This will be a good volume to read and re-read, if for no other reason than to see the desperate apologetics of the English-speaking peoples in an age when they actually have to be so desperately apologetic!

Postscript: My friend Jen shares my love for history (but probably not enough of my criticism of the Brits!). She just put up a blog called EmO-LoCo-ChiCa but you probably need permission to read it... :)

How History Should Be Written

Got my pay today after much wrangling and arm-twisting. Long story. It involved the usual cast of characters: Mr Incompetence and Mdm Inconsideration, narrow-minded caricatures living down there on narrow-minded street. After making my necessary monthly payments, I headed off to MPH and found this really funny book on British history by John O'Farrell called "An Utterly Impartial History Of Britain Or 2000 Years Of Upper Class Idiots In Charge". This is probably the best book out there on British history. If more history books were written in this vein, my students would be standing in line to grab hold of it!

Some samples from the book:

On The Normans:

"Er, why's he called William the Conqueror?"
"Don't worry about that, it's just a nickname"

"In fact, during his lifetime... he was actually called "William the Bastard.. owing to his illegitmacy... and the fact he was a complete bastard... he thought nothing of having a man's tongue pulled out and nailed to his front door.. so you'd probably exercise a certain amount of caution before calling him it to his face... "

On Henry VIII:

"Our popular image of Henry is of a very fat and arrogant man with an annoying beard. In fact when he first came to the throne he was handsome and athletic... played the lute and is even credited with writing 'Greensleeves', the very essence of a renaissance Man."

"38 years later he died a bloated, disabled, paranoid despot, condemned to hell by the Pope, 5 failed marriages and the kingdom fiercely divided. Still, 'Greensleeves' is quite a catchy little number."

On the Creation of the Metropolitan Police:

"One thousand constables were introduced on to the London Streets to direct tourists to Tower Bridge, tell people the time and pull over any liberated slaves driving an expensive car... It is of course from Robert Peel that we get the slang word 'Bobby' for Policemen and well into the 20th Century the police were still nicknamed 'Peelers' Sir Robert Peel's middle names were 'Bill', 'Fuzz', 'Pig', 'Filth' and Rozzer'. "

On WWII:

"America also gave assistance to China who had turned up to the Second World War far too early in 1937. Relations between the United States and Japan were rapidly deteriorating as the latter took over French Indo-China. 'Why can't places like Vietnam just be left alone?' argued the Americans."

A History Lesson

Wrote a review of Simon Winder's "The Man Who Saved Britain" for the Visual Bookshelf on my Facebook page this morning. Here's what I wrote: Simon Winder gives us Bond in context. The book covers the history of post-War Britain and highlights the disillusionment of the average Brit regarding the end of the glorious "British Empire". In the midst of these sentiments, Ian Fleming produced the novels that gave us James Bond - somewhat like a last gasp of the glory that was Britannia. The book is highly entertaining (sometimes even more than the original Bond books and films!) and hilarious. I found myself laughing on every page.

Truth is, Winder is not just hilarious. I found plenty that was useful from this book. Even used some of it in my history class yesterday. I was trying to convince my students regarding the importance of studying history. Did a revision of Form One history with them and realized that the main reasons why students hate history are: (i) textbooks are terribly written (if they resembled even 10% of how Simon Winder wrote, everyone'd be studying history); (ii) history teachers are terrible in presenting this stuff; (iii) students end up getting bored and failing to see the relevance of having a well-developed sense of history.

I paraphrased the following passages from Winder's book and the students got the point immediately:

"Why should we be interested in history? Many people are not. Perhaps the great majority live very thoroughly in the present - children have a horizon only centimetres from their toes, many people through exhaustion and daily need can think little about the past or the future, many others live largely in the future, through religion or ambition, personal or familial. To be interested in the past is both a specific activity and a very vexed one: history is as likely to be a source of toxins as of pleasure..."

The students were pleased to see a history teacher actually trying to understand their frustrations with developing even the remotest interest in studying history. One student even said that they study history simply because the Education Ministry made it compulsory! Another student explained that she could not see the relevance of history since there's no way that we can change the past anyway (sheesh! these kids were smarter than I thought!). I agreed with her and stole another analogy from Simon Winder:

"At some level history really is useless: to comment on history is as wan an activity as yelling at the players in a televised football game: they can't hear you, they don't care and it's already too late. For me this latent sense of horror is always best summed up by the villain in Umberto Eco's medieval fantasy The Name of the Rose, trapped in an underground passage. Nobody rescues him because by the time they can dig him out he will have died of asphyxiation. History and the application of history to the present shares this nightmare, with an almost unbreakable mesh between ourselves and present, unfolding events that cannot be torn through. What value does a reading of history have? Its great value has to be, as a historian recently summed it up, to "criticize, criticize, criticize". For me, nothing can be more valuable than this constant patrolling around an always shifting kaleidoscope of events and decisions, both in themselves (they explain why we are here, doing what we do, earning what we earn) and because their interpretation is in effect a cross-examination of the present and of ourselves."

From there, I took the class on a tour of the ancient past and our methods of discovering the treasures therein. We discussed Oral and Written traditions as well as the role of archaeology in verifying the facts (at the same time, giving them a panoramic view of the developments of civilizations and religion). We discussed the composition of religious books (Bible, Koran, Sanskrit Scriptures), their underlying sources in myths and oral traditions, and how "stories" are what bind the seemingly unrelated facts, events and peoples together. We talked about the Battle of Pellenor Fields (one of my student is a fantasy buff who's hooked on Tolkien, Eddings, etc.) and the people involved (why are you interested in them?). We then talked about the ancient Srivijaya and Majapahit Kingdoms and their supposed lineage to the Indus Civilization AND the Alexandrian Egyptian/Hellenistic Empires simultaneously. Got them intrigued by all the supposed links between ancient kingdoms and religious traditions. Finally, I showed them the parallels between Animism as a religion and Disney movies as mass entertainment. In other words, we had a ball! Covered three chapters of Form One history, laughed a lot, asked a lot of questions, answered a lot of doubts and had a great time. Wait till I get to British Imperialism and the other stuff... :)

As an aside, I told them about the process of recording/interpreting history. Opened my Redaction-Criticism toolbox and brought out the two-headed beast of: (i) selection and (ii) arrangement of facts/events. History is what we make of it - it is to be meditated upon more than to be studied (but of course, for the sake of banal public examinations, the nationally-prescribed method of rote-learning and memorization may be required). Ultimately, it is about people - the human condition, the world as stage. Talked about Herodotus and the quest for a unifying theory of history. The students laughed at the Greek's pessimistic worldview of humans existing simply as the playthings of the gods but started to take it more seriously once they saw the implications of such metaphysics. At that point, I questioned myself whether I'd gone too far? Was it advisable to start developing existential angst in these innocent teenage girls who should really be more interested in dresses, hairpins and boyfriends? I don't know. But the class ended at that point and we moved on to Geography instead...

Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto - The Girl From Ipanema (1964)

Translation of lyrics from Portugese:

Look at this most lovely, most graceful thing
It's her - the girl passing by, walking to the sea, swaying sweetly
Girl whose body is golden from the Ipanema sun, your swaying is more than poetry, it's something more beautiful than I have ever seen before.

Ah, why am I so alone?
Ah, why is everything so sad?
Ah, the beauty which exists, but does not belong to me, and also passes by alone.
Ah, if only she knew that when she walks by the world smiles, fills with grace and becomes more beautiful through love.

Grisha Goryachev

Quantum of Solace

The new Bond is a little bit more "Punisher" and a lot less Brit-accessories-boy, don't you think?

Best Bond Accessory

Cats were associated with the James Bond myth for the past forty years. Chiefly, the trend was started by Blofeld, the head of SPECTRE, stroking a cat all the time. What better Bond accessory can there be other than this Spy Video Cat above (batteries not included). For all you villain-wannabes, you can opt for the one below:

Dress up as Blofeld and live out all your megalomaniacal fantasies as the head of SPECTRE. [SPECTRE ring sold separately...]

A Royale Weekend

Very good weekend with family and friends. Got to catch up with some old friends on Catbook... I mean, Facebook (Catbook is only for Flirty Cat). I also finished Fleming's "Casino Royale" in one morning. Sat in Starbucks, SS15 with my wife. She read "The Immortal Iron Fist Vol. 2" and I read "Casino Royale". Never read Fleming before. Pretty funny shit. Kids asked me what it was about. I explained. Oh, it's about James Bond gambling with this bloke (who was a banker for SMERSH). They asked me why Smurfs needed a gambling banker. I didn't know what to answer. Anyway, Bond lost all his money and the US gave him more money. Then he started winning. And the other bloke got pissed so he kidnapped Bond's girlfriend and then tortured Bond by beating his balls with a cane. My kids were laughing hysterically by this point. Then a SMERSH assassin cycled to the torture room to kill the banker but being a smart-ass, decided not to kill James Bond. Kids asked me why a Smurf-assassin "cycled"? Again, I had no answers. Kids these days with their pesky questions. Sheesh! Bond recovered in a hospital but refused to allow others to bathe him because his balls were swollen. Then he went on a holiday with his girlfriend. While the girlfriend was sleeping, Bond went skinny-dipping. When he got back, he caught the girlfriend making a phone call. That led to the end of their relationship and the girlfriend swallowed some sleeping pills. The End. My kids thought it was the funniest story that I'd ever told them. Go figure.

In order to make sense of what I read, I went back to Simon Winder, who wrote probably the best book on Ian Fleming and the whole Bond-mania ever! If anyone had any answers, I thought that Winder would've been the man to talk to. Winder explained that "Casino Royale" was all about the avocado. I was scratching my head by that point. Winder then explained that the avocado was not available in Britain until the late 1950s so when Fleming had Bond eating an avocado in the novel, it was the height of exotica. In short, Bond is all about fantasies of bored Englishmen struggling with the loss of their former glory as "Britannia". Winder also explained that Leiter, the US Agent, handing Bond the envelope containing money to go for another round of baccarat summed up the entirety of Anglo-American relationship. I agreed heartily.

In the evening, I watched "Thunderball" with the kids and they laughed some more. Especially at all the underwater scenes. "Thunderball" is all about water, sharks and voluptuous women who thought that sleeping with a villain named "Number Two" was a good idea. It was interesting in a way so I decided to spend the rest of this week going through the Bond films on DVD.

MARÍA FÉLIX: BEAUTIFUL MARÍA OF MY SOUL...

South Of The Border

I performed this "live" one night more than 10 years ago in the old Peyton Place. Life was good. :)

Be Serious, Edmund!

I was catching up with old friends on Facebook yesterday. Wrote funny messages on their "FunWall". Suddenly, the Arkansas cat reappeared next to my notebook and gave me a serious look. Told me that it doesn't like it when I'm not serious. Told me to read some posts by serious people like The Vincit talking about non-existent objects while pontificating about abortion. I ignored the Serious Cat and continued my quest for the ultimate in silliness. That brought me to "Sarah Marshall" and "Zohan". I got to know idiots like Bill Hader and Jason Sogel. Serious Cat thought that I wasn't taking it seriously enough so it brought along its friend, Serious Dog...

This is Serious Dog with its ever serious face. It didn't talk much. Told me that it didn't like talking to funny heretics like me. Said I should be a little more "purpose-driven" in my pointless life. I explained that I am driven. My purpose is to seek out the ultimate in silliness. Guess that didn't amuse it. It continued staring at me in a serious way. When it started speaking again, it continued spouting lines from self-help books. It told me about the importance of investing in property and a life-insurance policy. It told me about having a vision and fanning the flames of ambition. I wasn't listening by then. I was fiddling a ballpen while staring at the girl opposite me. She looked like Natalie Meng. Only purer and more innocent. Some time later, my friend, Angsty Plat came along...

This is Angsty Plat. He too thinks that I should be more serious. By that, he meant to say that I should rewatch movies filled with angst like "The Deer Hunter" or "Of Mice And Men". As a bonus, I should also probably check out picture books written by cranky Brits who abhor the spandex-crowd. Angsty Plat believes that whatever is ignored, unknown, unread and unwatchable is superior art-form. The rest is kitsch (or shit). Angsty Plat also happened to be a great friend and I love him despite his endless angst and eccentric choices in books, comics, movies, music, etc.

Finally, here's Flirty Cat. Flirty Cat is busy hooking up with flirtatious cats wearing low-cut dresses on Catbook. He divides his time between being dazed and confused in SIN and being dazed and confused in the Land of Catty Smiles. Some months back, Flirty Cat was in Salzburg and Berlin but nothing beats the Land of Catty Smiles. 'Cos once you've tasted the Catty Smiles, you'll go for no other. Flirty Cat loves the feeling of being a pampered monarch in the Land of Catty Smiles. Ironically, Flirty Cat also happens to be one of my closest friends (and mind you, we did not get to know each other over the online Catbook). To me, the Land of Catty Smiles is all about pirated goods and cheap action figures. To Flirty Cat? I don't know. Last we dined, we talked about his emotional-deficiencies (Stupid Romeo like me tried explaining to him the importance of "liking" a cat and "bedding" one!) but Flirty Cat crawls back to the same Land of Catty Smiles for another taste every few months. You know why? Once you've tasted Catty Smiles, there's nothing like it - and don't let no one tell you otherwise... :)

That my friends, is the story of the Serious Cat, the Serious Dog, the Angsty Plat and the Flirty Cat. What use have I of seriousness? My life is an endless quest, an ongoing experimentation with the silly and the ridiculous. The other day, I stood under a tree waiting for the bus. A crow perched on a tree and shat on me. I wasn't so much annoyed as I was curious. Black crows' shit is snow-white (and not even smelly). The black crow cackled in laughter and flew away. I wiped away the bird-shit and went off to the school to coordinate my students' rehearsals for the charity concert while reading Stephen King's "The Talisman". The charity concert is over but I'm not done with King's novel yet. I spoke to Flirty Cat just the other day and tried explaining the "Lolita Syndrome" to him. It was funny and repulsive at the same time. Maybe I've simply been too busy and addle-brained lately. Or maybe I was simply trying to avoid the topic of his latest forays to the Land of Catty Smiles ("no love means no heartache, bro?"). I'm not sure. My life is actually an ongoing battle against boredom. I write imaginary nonsense about global conspiracies and trips to Arkansas for just that (funny thing is, Fake Plats and Serious Cats take me all too seriously and condemn me for "spilling my seed" everywhere... haha!). Is there a point explaining the artistic-impulse of mental-masturbation as a tradition that I inherited from the esteemed Lake Poets (Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats)? I guess not. They are far too serious to listen to me. When I'm not working (and not writing down my silly fantasies), I'm reading other people's fantasies in four-colours about spandex-clad do-gooders beating down giant-mutant-hunting-robots. Or zombies. Or would-be evil despots. Or I hide in a closet and read teenage romance novels while laughing my head off. That's my life in a nutshell. I'm going home for dinner now. Why so serious?

Silly Movies And Genitalia

Just watched "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and "You Don't Mess With The Zohan" back-to-back. Reaffirmed my beliefs in silly American comedies. Loved them. Only complaint is the excessive shots of male-genitalia but you'll get over it after a while. I know I did. These two movies (along with "Superbad") make up the new holy-trilogy of silly American comedies. Forget gloomy crap like "The Dark Knight" and go catch one of these... :)

[Note: Emmanuelle Sophie Anne Chriqui's "Dalia" looked almost as good as my Dalia. At least in my mind, that is...]

Here's the trailer for "Zohan". Enjoy... :)