No, we didn't get to meet Fergie, unfortunately, but I did make up for sixteen years worth of missing England by feasting merrily on a variety of artery-clogging food.
Including Walker's.
Especially Walker's.
I used to sit in front of the telly every evening tuning in to the Beeb, happily munching away; crisps in one hand, tea in the other.
Ah, how poignant.
Wasn't the world a much better place when you were a kid?
(Maybe)
Should his Lordship be referred to as merely 'Sir Alex', or the more protocol-friendly 'Sir Alex Ferguson?'
Fuck it, I'm going to Old Trafford! Fuckit! Fuckit!
On a lighter note (what?), I'm still thinking of bringing a Liverpool jersey along.
Phwoar!
TONEDEF, July 2001: I remember almost getting whipped in the face by those dreads as I earnestly zoomed in for my Rolling Stone picture.
The guy was seriously loaded, headbanging away, completely oblivious to the crowd, and people with cameras. You try coaxing metal heads if you want...
Later, I ran into Emmet backstage right after Butters had brought the house down with a particularly inspiring closing performance (you ain't heard Viopipe unless you've heard it live, aite?)
Soaked to the skin, flushed and still buzzing, I remember feeling like a right twat because I really needed to get a good quote for my story, but I also didn't want to cramp his style after such a great show. Let rock stars be rock stars already, I thought to myself. Don't pester him just yet! Let the poor man bask in the afterglow.
"So, Emmet, how are you feeling?"
"Tired, man. But shit, that was good."
Sometimes, you just hope for the best.
As writers, we're all allowed to be at least a little bit pretentious, if not for the sake of art, then for the fact that most creative people are naturally cranky and have egos the size of football fields (football as in soccer, not the padded-up, let's-fuck-some-cheerleaders-after-this-beer-hoo-ya! kind of football).
So, here goes nuthin'.
I'd like to clear the air on why I'm not going to ever join a newspaper. daily or otherwise, so long as my heart keeps on beating.*
It's not because of the fact that newspapers here like to dumb down their content (egalitarian my ass; people should learn big words not because they should be smarter but because all of those big words are there for a reason), not because newspapers encourage lifers (who the hell would want to write for one section of a newspaper for a good ten years of their lives? Does it take that long to get noticed?) and not because newspapers suffer from an increased proclivity (there, a big fucking word!) for office politics.
No.
It's because newspapers are not cool. They're not cool.
That's the only reason. They're not cool.
So, forget about the Daily Planet. Forget about Clark Kent and Lois Lane. Forget about saving the world.
They're not cool.
And you should know something else, too: Peter Parker gets peantus for his photos in the Daily Bugle. Brenda Starr wouldn't be able to get the story if she didn't fuck all of her leads. And Nancy Drew, fucking hell, don't get me started on that shit.
So, yeah, that's a negative, Sarge.
No go, amigo.
Freelancing for newspapers is still okay, once in a while, but signing a legal and binding contract with them to do with me as they please is definitely not going to happen.
Never happen.
(fingers crossed)
*I mean no disrespect to my fellow writers. But fuck me, I'm happy I don't have to do your job!
"So, if you interview models all of the time, you must know a lot about women?"
"Er, what do you mean by that?"
Okay, so I do interview models. It's part of my job. I get them into a comfort zone, and ask them all sorts of weird questions about their lives. They get defensive about their intelligence and try to appear knowledgeable and up-to-speed on everything (don't get me started about my theory on models and their obsession with horoscopes). They tell me things they think I want to hear, things they think people actually want to read about. In turn, I reassure them and tell them, of course, people want to!
But if you think that helps me to understand women any better, you're wrong. I fuck up just as much as the next guy.
I'm only human.
As a rule, I never explicitly trust people who like to listen to just one type of music, or music from just one era in time. That sort of behaviour belies a narrow-mindedness that is compounded by an obsession with the past, together with an inability to accept the present, and possibly, a certain amount of distress about facing the future.
Personally, I think that people who are stuck in an Eighties musical time-warp are particularly lame because, despite growing up in that decade, the Eighties sucked ass.
So get with the program, motherfucker.
Thank you.
Make of it what you
wish, but please remember, don't
ignore black and white.
"Remember, your infulence is more bigger!" said the Suit, in reference to the pervasiveness of the print medium, in comparison to television.
Yeah, man. I agree.
Fuckin-A!
I'm now officially one of those people who've posted a cutesy picture of their pet online.
Fuck it.
But ain't he king?
Mr Tiddles is going to be three soon. Happy Birthday, mate! And please don't crap in my room, yeah?
When you're flying blind into an interview, there are usually two outcomes: Very Funny, or Very Stupid.
I've done a lot of interviews where I've been completely fucking ignorant of my subject; in most of those situations, I'd either done next to nothing in terms of research, or was just too plain lazy to do so.
So, what do you do when you don't know what to ask?
You improvise.
You read the body language.
You look for common ground.
And you do it all with a smile. And crack a few dumb jokes, in between.
In short, you wing it. Like your life depends on it. You've blown your two port engines. So you coast along, easy does it, at your own pace. On your own time. And you try to glide that motherfucker in, as gently as you can.
There.
That's how you do it.
That's how you survive.
It rained for the first two days, I went bungee jumping on the third day, missed the Full Moon party at Ko Phangan on a technicality (freak weather) and was regrettably AWOL for Valentine's Day (sorry, baby).
And then, on my last day in Thailand, I saw this:
Beautiful, huh?
I am officially a fanboy. And I have Mac to thank for that. Because he's a fanboy, too.
We both discovered that we were unashamedly obsessed with the Battlestar Galactica series on the Sci Fi channel, during a recent MSN conversation. I think it has something to do with listening to a lot of futuristic sounds. After all, most dnb fans are Sci-Fi geeks, anyway. So, what the hell.
I don't care.
I want to be a Viper pilot.
It's funny how acutely a person loses their sense of purpose after retirement. Quite literally funny, in fact.
Think about it; you've been absolved of everything that accompanies Working Life - tight deadlines, Monday morning depression and although you can't periodically Xerox your butt crack any more, well, you don't have to.
I've never seen my Dad like this before. He watches more television than my 13 year-old sister (" Abang, MTV sucks but you know what Damien from TRL is so cute"), hangs out more than I do and has the ability to mysteriously vanish and re-appear two hours later with tasty cakes and pies.
Anyway, when I retire, I'm still going to be producing. Hell, I'll probably even be able to beat-match properly by then.
To my dear friends down south, especially Kuza, Andy, Ajay, Aresha, Suffian and Zaihan (and even homeboys like Mac and A&B), I am known as the Pangsai King.* This is because I've stood them up many times when I promised them I'd make it, especially right here on my own turf.
Hell, Andy even told me he'd ban me from Exitmusik, possibly for life, if I'm ever guilty of a no-show again.
Bad Kamo.
So, I promised the guys I'd turn up for this gig. And I will. In fact, maybe you should, too.
I'll need some witnesses.
Boh!
*What does Pangsai mean? Google, motherfucker.
Outdoor advertising. Can't switch it off, can't turn it down.
Doesn't she look like she's about to grab your balls, though?
Like a lot of kids his age, my brother can't tell the difference between atmospheric and liquid funk. Or even deep house and tech, for that matter.
Because, like a lot of kids his age, he missed out the rave scene of the Nineties. They don't know about Apollo 440, Danny Rampling and never experienced the primal, ear-splitting thrill of listening to Prodigy's Firestarter and not being able to associate it with anything else they were listening to during the death-knell of Grunge.
See, they totally missed the bus!
They never felt the rush of listening to the Chemical Brothers Block Rockin' Beats, for the first time, and wondering just what the fuck they were listening to, or why it sounded so strange and beautiful.
They didn't do the Backroom-Clubhouse-Movement circuit (in that order), didn't go to Zero, didn't get rat-arsed drunk or trip at Digweed. And don't get me started on Bukem.
The thing is, you can't really blame them; their earlist memory of Oakie was probably the Swordfish soundtrack, whereas ours was Dragonfly.
You can't call them posers just because they think Tiesto is God (before the Southern Sun remix, there was Destination Sunshine, all right?) or think that Zouk is the ultimate club, just because it's the biggest club in KL right now.
Kids, you don't know shit. But you know what, it's all good.
Because you weren't there from the start.
They're like tracers.
Each month, I send out emails to celebrities in which I, very politely, ask for exclusive interviews. Some of them are super-famous like HR Giger, Stan Lee and Stephen King, and some of them are just plain weird.
Like real tracers, they light up the dark and arc through the air with a sense purpose. But like real tracers, they do not guarantee a kill.
I just like to try my luck.
I just sent tracers out to Amir Muhammad, a man who I consider to be my generation's Great Malaysian Writer.
For once, I'm nervous.
If he does say Yes, it will at least console the fanboy in me that I did something right along the way to land an interview with one of my own literary heroes.
Rock 'n' roll, motherfuckers.
I'm cruisin, the wind in my hair.
For a moment, I remember what it was like to throttle up highways in my 69 Beetle; the steady hum of the engine, the silence of the night and the way it was just me and the machine. It got me a little choked up.
Last night, however, I found that I was driving like that because some fucking crackwhore jacked my stereo. Yes, he smashed my window with a crow bar (probably) and gutted my centre console like a fish to get to the player.
Goddamned amature.
(If he had been a bit more patient, he might have chanced upon my CD case and found my entire Knowledge Mix CD collection that dates from mid-2003. If he'd had nicked that, I might've been compelled to do a Jihad on his ass. But then again, maybe he wasn't into drum n bass).
It's gonna to cost me some, so if I ever catch junkies anywhere near my car, someone's gonna get a hurt real bad.
"Richard, a Black Russian is vodka and coffee-flavoured brandy, yeah?"
"Yeah"
"Hey, so what do you call a Hennessy and some coffee?"
"Right now? A very good idea"
My editor is quite possibly the Coolest Dude in the Known Universe. And yeah, you can quote me on that.
