justin_guber - @ 20six.co.uk

Dental Hijinx

Everybody has a fear of that man (or woman) with the pliers, stanley blade and really small motorized brushes.

No, not the hobbie-geek, the dentist.

I don't know many people who love dental visits a la Bill Murray in Little Shop of Horrors, and I am no exception. My jaw is still swollen and my tooth (or lack of) still aches, an annoying little pain, a dental manifestation of that annoying git in the pub who won't shut the fuck up.

And there is no last call.

I went in for the surgery on Monday. I knew I wouldn't be fasting, and I also knew I wouldn't be eating something solid for at least a week, so after visiting my girlfriend during her lunch break I headed straight to Burger King for a Whopper w/ Cheese (no pickles, no onions), onion rings (yes, I don't like onions in general except in onion rings), a large coke and a cheeseburger.

I didn't finish the cheeseburger.

Then to the dentists. Mr. Dentist (who's name I can never remember) explained the procedure to me after an x-ray.

"Are there any risks?" I asked.

"Well..." he replied, picking his words carefully, "every operation isn't without risks. The only risk is nerve damage, which may paralyze your jaw or kill all feeling in that region. But don't worry. I've done loads of these, and I haven't screwed up once".

By that rationality, wouldn't the dentists' propensity to fuck up be considerably high?

"We'll also be taking out your top wisdom tooth. Hope you don't mind."

Could've warned me, you sadist in a white robe.

He then proceeded to take out a steel needle the size of one of those artificial insemenators for cows filled with anaesthetic and jabbed the inside of my mouth a couple times.

Not lovin' it, so far.

They then brought me to the operating table and put a piece of cloth over my head. Apparently Aza's dentist distracted her with rock music. No such luck here.

My mouth was numb, and I couldn't feel any pain, but that doesn't mean I couldn't feel. The scalpel was practically unnoticed but the drill, oh dear god, the drill. It sounded like they were mining for diamonds or something: VVVVVVVRRRRRRRRRVVRVRVRVVVVRRRRRVVVRRRRR...!!!!!

Dentists also seem to assume that since your drugged up you must be drugged up all over. The nurse was pitching my bottom lip over my teeth on the un-drugged side of mouth, and everyone was clinging and clanging their tools against my teeth with reckless abandon, or prying my jaw open with their bare hands, as the crunchy sound of...

"AAaarrgghhhGGHH!!!!"

"Was that pain or pressure?" asked the dentist. I could've sworn I heard 'pain or pleasure'.

"Paiiihhhh...!!!! PAAAIIHH!!!!"

"Ah, I see what the problem is! We've drilled through a nerve, not to worry."

And then they drugged me some more.

See, to take out the bottom wisdom tooth, they had to cut the fucker in half, hence the scalpel cutting up the gums and the excessive drilling, sawing, etcetera. Crunch crunch creek crunch...

"We're gonna need bigger pliers."

CRUNCH CRUNCH CRREEEEEKK CCCRRRUUNCHHHH.... SNAP!

Ow.

"And now the other half."

By this point I could've sworn they just shoved a piece of timber into a loose part of the gum and tried to heave the rest of the fucker out.

CRACKKKK CCCRRRRAAAACCCKKK CCCCCCCCRRRAAAAACCCCKKKLLLLE... POP!

I felt like a fucking cereal.

"And now the top one."

Squeek squeek squeek crunch. CCCRRRuuunnncch. CCCRRRRUUUUNNNNCCCCHHHH. CRACK CRUNCHHH CCCRRAAACKKK CRRUNCCCCHH... plop.

"All done."

Ow. Ow. OW.

I went home with a blood filled piece of gauze in my jaw and no feeling in my lips. For now. I spent the remaining two days watching Buffy Season One amidst painkillers, mouth rinse, KFC whipped potato and tomato soup.

The second this thing heals I'm having a fucking steak.

3.11.04 03:59

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Guitar Fetish Post - Now With Swedish Wood!

If you click on the picture above, you'll be taken to a site belonging to one Zachary, who makes his own guitars. This one above, however, is somewhat special: it's made from an Ikea table.

It's about time someone found a use for that shite. So far, there hasn't been a single thing I've bought from Ikea that hasn't broken down except for a desk lamp. My ikea bed broke, my ikea table was wobbly, my ikea book case was a bitch to put up (and they fooled me into thinking nails were not required, the liars) and my ikea clothes rack looks like the leaning tower of pisa.

Maybe I should take all that wood and do what this guy did. It'd be a shit-load more rewarding.

3.11.04 07:16

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The Difference is in the Fingers

So I was talking to my girlfriend the other day about this here blog, and she said that reading my blog is like reading about someone completely different to the person she cuddles and makes out with, time permitting.

Strange, but somewhat understandable.

I often find myself able to articulate my thoughts, feelings and deepest desires with much more clarity when I'm typing. Perhaps it's because when I think, I type out exactly what I'm saying in my head. Talking, in retrospect, takes up too much time, and the mouth often loses the brain's plot.

My brain also tends to go blank during times of conversation. I could come up with a dozen witty one-liner comebacks to every single one of the various insults and disses I have received over the years.

It's most evident at pitches. When I'm presenting to the client, everything I plan to say in my head is automatically disposed of and thrown out of my ears, as I mumble and fumble my way through, hoping and praying I'm making sense.

Sometimes I'll type out my entire pitch and rehearse it and learn it, but the second I get asked a question I'm screwed beyond compare.

But with a keyboard, hah. I can type like a motherfucker, and all the odd anecdotes and disturbing adjectives describing the mating rituals of geese are released.

Yeah.

3.11.04 07:34

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"Not bad meaning bad but bad meaning GOOD!"

- I think that's the quote. A line from a Beastie Boys song from the Licensed to Ill album. Might have been 'No Sleep Till Brooklyn'.

Sometimes, shit is a thing of beauty. Sometimes, some things are immortal for their inherent shite-ness. Like New Kid On The Block's "Step By Step". Did you see the music video? But in all its crapiness is a certain kitsch, harking back to happier, more innocent times, when the 'running man' was the dance move to end all dance moves, and a hair cut with 'short back and sides' took on a whole new meaning.

The same goes for movies. Especially movies. There's something wonderful about really bad movies which make them really good. And thanks to badmovies.org, where you can download wav files, pics and mpegs as well as read reviews of these horrors, those moments will forever live on long after they've been deleted from the stock lists of video stores across the globe. Just click on the pic's or bold bits below to be whisked away to its own site. Enjoi:

"Drop that zero and get with the hero"
Just like NKOTB, Vanilla Ice was also a staple of the early nineties, a period forever immortalized by insanely baggy tapered silk trousers, over-exagerated dance moves, and the evolution of the big hair of the eighties: the high-top.

Now, as much as it's easy to hate the fucker, you have to admit that 'Ice Ice Baby' was a kickass pop song (calling it a hip-hop song would be an insult to hip-hop and everything it has tried so hard to accomplish. Namely big booty women in thongs and 22 inch rims), and along with the other white boys with high-top haircuts, the girls were a-swooning.

Still, I don't see why it warrants a movie as fucked as this. Vanilla Ice is a bad motherfucker with a posse on motorbikes who arrive in a small town and proceed to bust-a-move, showing the white community that hip-hop rocks. Or something. Throw in some preppy bullies and some kind of witness protection storyline which really wasn't necesarry, and you have a cinematice masterpiece worthy alongside such reknown hip-hop celluloid moments as 'Wild Style'.

Or not.

"I'm gonna let them know that Dolemite is my name, and fucking up motherfuckers is my game!"
From wannabes to the real deal. This is Dolemite, motherfucker. Rudy Ray Moore, pimp-daddy supreme, released from prison by the warden himself to take care of an evil pimp (since when we're pimp's fine examples of moral society to begin with?) together with his Karate-kicking ho's.

No, seriously.

Unlike other classic Blaxploitation movies, this one was different. In this one, the boom mic was a member of the cast.

But in all it's badness, it has some of the most quotable lines and some of the coolest scenes in a seventies blaxploitation movie. Did Shaft have Karate-trained ho's? No. Did Sweet Sweetback rip an evil pimp's heart out with his bare hands? No. Did either rap? Fuck no.

And that's one of the main reasons Rudy Ray Moore has an iconic place in history. Many people (well, one. My American friend American Badass Dave, who showed me this movie) have said that this is where rap began, with Dolemite's rhyming style, standing in the middle of parking lots boasting Ali style to anyone who'd listen. Ali only ever did four lines. This motherfucker does verses n' shiiiit.

It's also got one of the coolest lines I can remember in a blaxploitation movie: "Man move over and let me pass 'fore they have to be pulling these hush puppies out your motherfuckin' ass!"

A close second to another favorite line from the movie: "You rat-soup eatin' honky MOTHERFUCKER!"

Both lines are available to download as wav files.

"I kick arse for the Lord!"
Braindead, or DeadAlive as it's called in certain parts of the globe, is one of those films I discovered late at night during a sleepover at my friend Izzy's place when we were both young 'uns in Goldersgreen with nothing much to do except play basketball and listen to Snoop. There's nothing like that first feeling of "what in the name of FUCK is this?!" when viewing this film.

And it's by the same guy that did Lord of the Rings.

That's right. Peter Jackson. Before he went all grand-scale, Mr. Jackson was making rather horrific movies in his place of origin. Bad Taste was one. Braindead was another.

And what can you expect from Braindead? How about hybrid rat made from evil rats that raped monkeys? What about said rat biting an old and bitter woman, turning her into a zombie? What about said zombie eating a dog? Or a priest who knows kung-fu, beating the shit out of zombies? Or the reluctant hero, the mother's son, killing off the zombies with a lawnmower? Or zombie sex? Or a baby zombie? Or zombie innards?

I have to admit, the first time I watched it, there were a few times when my stomach was seriously queesy, but you get used to it, and by the end, after the mother has mutated into a super-zombie, all you can do is root for the hero and hope he gets the girl. Make no mistake, this movie kicks supreme ass.

"Come get some."

I would write a whole load about Evil Dead, Evil Dead II and Army of Darkness, but if you don't know about this trilogy of superbly executed frightfest/slapstick comedies you have not lived.

Then, there are the movies I haven't seen, but look terribly terrible none-the-less:

"Do you Mary Contrary Hubbard take this man, Jack Nimble Junior, to be your husband, to love and cherish and give him a lot of fun?"

Babes in Toyland: Keannu Reeves. Drew Barrymore. Pat Morita. And a shit-load of muppets.

"We're running low on skin. I suggest we harvest another lesbian."

Jesus Christ, Vampire Slayer: Literally. Starring no-one interesting.

"I... have... the POWER!"

Masters of the Universe: As a child I waited for this movie. As an adult, after seeing a few clips, I am glad my father never let me.

There's plenty more at badmovies.org, so get a clicking and discover the wonderful world of poop.

3.11.04 13:07

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Dentally Challenged

It's not getting any better.

Thankfully, it's no longer bleeding, but it's aching like a bitch. I couldn't go to sleep till 4am last night, I was so much in pain. The only reason I'm making it through the day is thanks to painkillers designed to relieve menstrual cramps, courtesy of Fran.

As such, I haven't been the nicest of bunnies today. Why did the doc only give me two days worth of ibuprofen, I ask you?! I want more! Kill the pain, stab it with steely knives and slay the beast!

Surrounding me is the sound of gaffer tape. Everyone's packing up for our big move to the new office next week. From what I have heard, the new spot isn't the most space-friendly.

But enough about work. My tooth hurts, and I wish to leave. The roads are empty but I'm waiting for a meeting to happen. This may take quite some time...

4.11.04 11:32

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Pain, Call Backs and Strange Dreams...

...just another day in the life of the Khaiser.

So yeah. Yesterday killed. The pain was intolerable. All I had were painkillers for menstrual cramps and I'm pretty sure the fuckers were 250mg at the most. Stayed in the office till 8.30pm waiting for a meeting to happen which never did, then left for Penang Mari to attempt to eat Kuey Teow.

It did not go well.

Halfway through eating, I get called back to the office. MARVELOUS. When I get there, my art director just went home, making my existence there useless. So I downloaded shit loads of mp3's.

That night, I had weird dreams of doing TVC's and everytime a shot wasn't right my jaw would ache something chronic.

Thankfully, I found some painkillers from a previous visit to the dentist. Ibuprofen. Pink tablets. 400mg each. Sweet.

5.11.04 09:31

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Ready For A Comic Fanboy Post?

The other day I was chatting with a colleague about how there were no more movies coming soon to look forward to. Spiderman 2 was suberb. Shrek 2 was hillarious. I, Robot was surprisingly well done (towards the second half, anyway. The first half had the rhythm of a 40 year old white male attempting to dance to that 'hippy-hop' crap he heard about).

Then I saw the screenshots of the Sin City movie. I thought, wow, but I'd never read Sin City save for a single issue called 'The Lady Wore Red', which was kinda cool. So I knew the style of it, but wasn't too hyped up about it.

Then I bought 'That Yellow Bastard', part of the Sin City tales.

Then I saw these posters on the net and could only think one thing: Holy SHIT.

Rodriguez is working close with the creator, Frank Miller, to make the movie as faithful an adaptation of the comic book as humanly possible, with the aid of CGI and some stellar actors which include:

Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Maria Bello, Kate Bosworth, Steve Buscemi, Benicio del Toro, Michael Douglas, Carla Gugino, Josh Hartnett, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Marley Shelton, Christopher Walken, Elijah Wood, Rick Gomez, Jason Douglas, Nick Stahl, Makenzie Vega, Katherine Willis, Clive Owen, Rosario Dawson & Michael Clarke Duncan.

Erm... WOW, anyone?
The Jessica Alba and Bruce Willis characters are from 'That Yellow Bastard', Jessica Alba being a 19 year old stripper name Nancy who was once an 11 year old girl who almost got raped by the son of a wealthy man if it wasn't for Bruce Willis' character, Hartigan, a 68 year old cop who gets framed.

Number one, I love Robert Rodriguez's work. He's up there in the Top Ten directors who I wish I could meet and learn from.

Number two, Frank Miller's not just selling the rights, he's working on it with Rodriguez (Frank Miller also wrote Robocop 2, for those who were curious).

Number three, it's got so many bloody good actors in it that the only way it can screw up is if they accidentally deleted the entire film during post.

I finally have something to wait for, cinema wise. Sure, everyone else is waiting for Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith, and yes, I'd love to watch it, but the excitement isn't there.

Not as much as Sin City.

Don't get me wrong: I love lightsabers. I love X-Wings. I even loved Yoda's fight scene in Episode II. But it's a given. There are already 5 Star Wars films. It's gotten to the point of "finally, it's the last fucking one. Let's get this over with."

There's also the Christian Bale Batman Begins movie coming out, and that one looks pretty cool too, with a cast that includes Gary Oldman and Michael Cain, but then again, it's also turned the batmobile into a tank, which makes me wonder.

Bale looks pretty broody in the mask, though.

Then there's Constantine, which looks, well, a bit silly. Based on the comic book Hellblazer, Constantine's meant to be British. He's meant to be from up North. He's not meant to be Keanu Reeves wielding a crucifix-shotgun.

Still can't get over the Jessica Alba poster. So she's in Fantastic Four and Sin City: one PG superhero movie based on a comic book, the other a super violent movie centering around corrupt officials, tough cops, strippers and whores.

I am happy.

8.11.04 12:11

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Attention, pretty women! Get paid without getting laid!

Ever checked out them.ws? Fun blog to check out. It was one section in particular, though, that caught my attention today. The babes section, subtitled "I do the work so you can jerk".

See, I already knew about Casey's Cam, which I heartily enjoyed, but it didn't really hit me that quite a number of fine looking young girls post cute n' sexy photos of themselves on the net for extra income. Some of them even have dildo shots. Or lesbo shots.

Marvelous.

For example, there's Karen and Amy, and I quote:

"You will be happy you have found this site! Two Internet teens have got together to make this awesome feature site!!

See the confident and pretty well known model Karen get together with the shy and innocent Amy to make this awesome friendship site!

Members get:

* To see them posing in bikini's!
* Going in for that first kiss..
* Playing twister!
* Dressing up! Cheerleader outfits!
* White panties, white socks!
* Pillow fights!
* Playing around on video including getting wet!
* Secret Karen and Stacey bonus "Shower" video from when karen was 18."

Lovely.

I won't put up any of the other pictures, because I specifically told myself not to post shots of anal rampage and other such acts of penetration on-line, so you can just click here to find sites such as the unsubtly titled Amber's Ass and the positively pornographic Sophie and Cameron.

It's strange how I find these interesting, somehow. Some of them are much more titilating than your regular run of the mill orgy pics that are rampant on the world wide web. There is no air brushed ass, no blushed up boobs and no powdered poop shoots. There's no fancy lighting, no muscular men, and most importantly, they don't look like spreads from a Readers Wives mag.

Then again, some of you may find my interest in perversion quite strange. Don't worry. I'm not the Marquis de Sade. I do not write reams of texts involving women, horses, buggery, fat men, wax, poop, crucifixes and midgets.

I guess one of the things that I find fascinating about stuff like Casey's Cam and Peepshow Stories is the fact that it's posted/written/maintained by willing individuals. The fact that they're not porn stars makes the sites more sexual, it's not two silicon-filled/steroid-pumped individuals getting paid to pose nude/fuck/swim in cum in front of a camera, it's regular people (although some of you may disagree) who are highly sexual.

Where the fuck were these people when I was in high school?

8.11.04 14:36

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This time, they've gone too far...

...and I'm not taking it anymore.

So last Sunday I was in for a special treat: my girlfriend was buying me dinner at the Japanese restaraunt in Mid Valley, the one near the cinema. It's one of my fav's, thanks to the fact that it's one of the few (if not the only of) resteraunts there that have a smoking area inside, as opposed to shoving you out on the streets like a stray gerbil. This was also going to be the first full meal I'd be having since the whole 'remove the wisdom tooth' thing: udon noodles, a bento set consisting of chicken tepanyaki, tempura, sushi, miso soup and watermelon and some gyoza.

Yum.

Before we went to the resteraunt, though, we were walking about Mid Valley like mallrats when I noticed something very odd on the preview screen at the cinema: a trailer for a Malay film was playing, and it has influenced me more than ever to go out and do my own damn movie.

If anything, to prove to myself that a Malay film AP (After P.Ramlee, one of the most kickass filmmakers in Malaysia ever) is not always a pile of stinking kancil poop.

If I'm not mistaken, the movie was called "Hip-Hop:Skateboarding:Mobile Phone".

Oh, dear.

The trailer featured hip-hop kids rapping in some dodgy venue, college girls being bitchy, some hip-hop kids skating quite badly and to top it all of, one kid 'acting' like he's trying to pull some trick on a make-shift bank, bailing quite softly then focusing his board.

Except it looked more like someone who didn't know how to skate going up a bank, falling, then trying to act like he was pissed off.

Oh, dear.

The thought of 'I Know What You Did Last Raya' being an actual movie as opposed to a really crap joke (or an even worse Senario sketch) was already mind-boggling enough as it is. But "Hip-Hop:Skateboarding:Mobile Phone"?

The mind's been ticking away furiously, trying to figure out something viable, possible, do-able.

First on the list is a horror film, but my main worry there is that of cinematography. I know that whatever I shoot will be on digital, and horror movies almost always involve shooting at night, meaning proper lighting. There are exceptions, though, like Dawn of the Dead, which brings me on to the next question:

If it was a zombie movie, how could it be a bit more original than all the zombie movies that have passed?

The other route was a movie focusing on one man slowly deteriorating a la Taxi Driver or Pi. Keep the cast small, keep the concept cool, use voice over a lot, settled.

But still.

All I know is I'm definitely going to go B-movie route for my first film. Peter Jackson did it. Sam Raimi did it. Robert Rodriguez did it. Worked out for them. They both got to do kick-ass adapations of known classics. If all goes well, maybe some bigtime Hollywood producer will come a-knocking asking me to adapt Gen13.

Or Transmetropolitan. That'd be kick-ass like a rather large ass-kicking device designed to kick ass on a daily basis with optimum force.

9.11.04 03:39

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See you next week, fuck-tarts.

The computers will be taken away from us at 1pm, and won't be on-line again until after Deepavali and Raya, meaning next Wednesday when we move to our new office at Wisma Genting, so unless I pop into the cybercafe or someone at the village has an internet connection I won't be blogging for about a week.

Eek.

Not sure how to make this a good one. Hell, there's probably no-one reading anyway. Is there? Are you out there? Hello...

Nope. I hear nothing. You probably stumbled onto this page looking for casey's cam pics, didn't you?

See y'all in a week.

...

Or not.

9.11.04 05:13

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