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CATEGORIES ::
> Blah! > Movies, Music, Guitars & Comics > Fiction
BLOOD, SWEAT N' TEARS ::
> Y2k > Ciplak
ONLINE PRESENCE ::
> MySpace > Flickr
FRIENDS' BLOGS ::
> Albert > Az > Cynthia > Debbie > Eddy > Effigy > Izuwan > Jordan > Kevin > Pete Teo > Rina > Shelley
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Blah!
Moon river's playing on the speakers of the outdoor area of the Old Wing Coffee Bean of One Utama. I'm sat smack in the middle, facing the highway, and the faint smell of durian is in the air. (Who the flying fuck brings durian to Coffee Bean? Does an Arabica blend complement the pungent odour of the king of fruits?) I'm sat here surfing on-line, salivating over the Clerks II special edition on the View Askew website, thinking about the movies I've been watching and the DVD's I want and all these thoughts in my head just strengthen what I've known all along. Piracy sucks. I've got DVDs that are out of sync. I've got DVDs with incredibly shitty transfers. But most of all, I've got DVDs that won't play, even though they played two years ago, or even one year ago, or even three days ago. The shelf life of pirated DVDs is insanely short. Especially the current ones on the market that are obviously duplicated using a much more 'cost-effective' method which leads to a short lifespan. You can tell just by putting the DVD up against the light - the fuckers are see through, for Gods sake! Compare it with an original DVD, shiny and silvery, as opposed to the current pirate batches, gold and transparent and not worth a damn. And since I have an original branded DVD player, not many of the current pirated DVDs run on it. And isn't it strange that, instead of taking advantage of this fact so as to point out the poor quality of pirated DVDs, manufacturers in Malaysia instead produce DVD players that are specifically designed to play the shittiest duplicated DVDs known to man? Anyone notice that? Yes, I know. I made a movie about piracy which didn't explicitly state the evils of piracy (if you thought I was gonna cop out like Remp-It did by having the guy die you must be out of your mind) but that doesn't mean I believe in it. I don't condone it. I'm just stuck in the same situation that I presented in the movie: that in Malaysia, piracy is the only choice. And it's pissing me off more and more. Case in point: there are only two of the movies from my Kevin Smith collection that actually work on my DVD player - my original Clerks X box set and Jersey Girl (which I actually enjoy as a movie, but don't really feel the need to watch it repeatedly). Mallrats stalls at the one hour mark, Chasing Amy refuses to play, Dogma is jumpy and Clerks 2 flat out refuses. It's bugging me more and more these days, because I'm a repeat watcher kinda guy, and I want my fucking movie dose. And I eat up movies like M&M's, there's no way I can afford to buy the movies off Amazon, and even then, there's no way I can know for certain the movies'll come through. My friend ordered Buena Vista Social Club three years ago off of Amazon and it's still with customs. Sigh... maybe I should make me one of those powerpoint presentations about piracy the way Gore did about the environment, tour some colleges or something. Try to make a difference. Tell the country what needs to be done, try to get some shit moving in the bowels of the government. Then I could film it like Gore did and release it. Hah. Goddamn, November's done. The Fat Festival in Thailand is done. The Singapore gig is done. The 'Ciplak' press conference and movie launch is done. Done done done. And I am exhausted. Will post pics of this whole month and whole anecdotes soon. Now? Now I must sleep the sleep of the just... ...who am I kidding? I'm recording a band today at the studio. Some wonder how much work I have. Here's a glimpse... Tuesday: Couldn't sleep the night before. Managed to get an hours sleep in the hotel room in Thailand, wake up at 6:30am, rush out, eat a breakfast of two fried eggs and french toast with two croissants and two cups of coffee and two cups of juice. Got on the plane and fell asleep for another hour, arrived in KL at around noon, got in a cab to my house, showered, changed clothes and made my way to Hoxes to check on the many e-mails, get work done and design the e-invites for the Ciplak launch party. Adjust media invite list, spend a few hours with Diana watching Crimson Tide and relaxing, went to the studio, remixed Triple 6 Poser's Another Lie' for the original motion picture soundtrack of Ciplak, pumped up the levels of the other tracks, burnt myself a copy to listen to and went to bed at 5:30am. Wednesday: Got up at around 9.30am to sort out the locations of the plug sockets for the new renovations of the house, checked e-mails, listened to the Triple 6 Poser mix and noticed more flaws, realize the printers won't have enough time to get the sountrack CD printed by the launch, decide to use CD-R's for the press kits and send the soundtrack later, went to 8TV for an interview about the movie, mingled with the head honchos, checked e-mail again to discover a number of problems with the press invites for the press screening, try to sort it out to not much avail which leaves me fuming, meet up with Diana, go to the Taman Tun house, check out the printed marketing materials, slightly letdown by the quality: pixelated. Sort out the free t-shirts for cast and crew, quick meeting with Dicky and Zeeka, rush off to rehearsals with Triple 6 Poser, go to the studio, transfer pictures of the Fat Festival to my computer from my cam and Saiful's, meet up with Tony, go to McDonalds and discuss the legalities of the upcoming short films and Ciplak screening at the Singapore gig. Thursday: Woke up at 11am. Only slept two or three hours tops. Downed a glass of coffee and went straight to the studio. Started rendering and burning process for the short films DVD I'm bringing to Singapore. Whilst that rendered, designed the poster for the Ciplak launch party in A3 and black and white A5 format. Then wrote an article for Junk magazine about the Fat Festival. Then burnt Fat Festival pictures together with Y2k press kit and prepared a copy of the album for Junk. Left the studio, went to the printers, dropped off the flyer and poster designs, went to the Junk office, dropped off the articles, decided to go to Jalan Pasar to grab an AC adapter for my H&K Tubeman, got lost and almost ended up in Kajang. Decide to forgo the adapter, picked up the posters and flyers and arrived at the studio at 4:30pm. Prepared data CD's for 8TV of snippets of Ciplak as well as the press kit and trailer in full AVI format, burnt them to CD-R, prepared Ciplak for DVD burning and suddenly realized I forgot to drop off the DV tapes of Ciplak at GSC for them to screen in the cinemas. Leave the office at 5:25pm, get stuck in a jam on the Penchala link because of a car crash, pick up the DV tapes from Taman Tun, drop them off at GSC office by 6:10pm, go to Laundry at the Curve to drop off flyers and posters, buy some Singapore currency and have my only meal so far for the day: a sausage roll. Make my way to 8TV, get there and discover that the people I'm supposed to send it to are at a mamak stall, go to the mamak stall, begins to rain, drop off the CD, rush to Mont Kiara and lie down on Diana's couch for an hour. Go back home, pack, Diana drives me to the studio to pick up the DVDs and Tony from his house, arrive at Pudu station at 11:30pm and make my way to Singapore at a minute to midnight. Fun, huh? ...if a friend of yours who you rely on starts dissapointing you repeatedly, do you wait it out and put up with it in the hope that it's just a phase or cut off ties immediately? Think about it. Answers to the usual comments section. Ok. Somebody please explain the logic behind this - I was on this girl's MySpace page, pimping out an upcoming gig in Singapore, when I saw a little thingey which tells you what you celebrities you look like. I thought, out of curiosity, I'd try it out. Then I got THIS: What. The. Fuck. Apparently, I most closely resemble Jean Harlow. I, the Guber, of Malay heritage, look like a blonde actress from Hollywood's golden age. What. The. Fuck. And how, exactly, do I resemble, in any way, Fred-fucking-Savage-? Does this mean I get to fuck Wendy? At least Kilmer's in the mix. But Tsui Hark? Please. I half expected Chow Yun Fat. Tsui Hark?! But he hangs around the house, ain't too scruffy and acts all adorable whenever he sees me so that I'll stroke him and feed him (although I don't think he wants the stroking. I think he puts up with the stroking whilst waiting for his Whiskas). He even comes into the house sometimes. Or blocks my car so that I can't get out by lying on it's back in the middle of the driveway. Or pops in through the window. Cute lil' bugger. Hot diggety damn if it hasn't been one tiring month. So busy have I been, in fact, that I haven't written a post since that last rant. Busy doing what, you wonder? Well, for starters, there've been a couple of bands recording at the studio, I've been editing them soundstage videos, acting in Pete Teo's upcoming music video (all green screen - I now know what it feels like to be an extra on Sin City), sorting out Ciplak (sound is fucked, need to sort out promo material, soundtrack, all that bollocks) and FYI and Y2k stuff (the amount of gigs coming up is silly. When did we suddenly get so big?) I guess being busy is good, in a way. It means there's work, and if there's work, there's income (or, at least, the possibility of income) but it's tiring as fuck. Today I had yet another stress-freak-out. Last one I had was a couple of weeks ago when this haze had me fevered up and yet I still had to work through the whole week. Feeling quite stressy again but trying to contain it. Girlfriend's been helping a lot, as well as a very fucking cool movie called 'Feast' that I recommend everyone in the world watch (but not alone. It's the type of movie you HAVE to watch with your friends). The stress thing is mainly born out of one thing: I haven't had any Guber time. No time for the Guber to spend to himself, to Guber his own Guberish ways. Sigh... Fuck it. There's work to do. It's saturday. Tomorrow will be the first day of fasting month. I have hardly had any sleep. Last night there was a booking that had me going to bed at 6 in the morning. And I had to be up three hours later for my brothers birthday. The day before that I slept at 4am and had to wake up at 8.30am. I am incredibly tired, beyond reason. My left foot and ankle are in absolute pain. Cold air conditioners, rain and a pair of slightly tight Air Jordan's are to blame. Changing gears is a bitch. The internet in this place is fucked. Took me half an hour to log in to 20six to write this damn blog. I'm quite sure my girlfriend's upset with me. I have work to do. I'm sweating in a strange manner. What a great fucking day. ...life just keeps getting packed up by the minute, doesn't it? At this moment, I'm still sorting out what needs to be sorted out for Ciplak (the FINAS issue never dies), sorting out administrative stuff, beautification, and other things at FYI that no-one really thinks about when imagining the 'glamour' of running your own company, taking on one of those editing jobs where you cut down a raunchy international music video for local airing, trying to sort out other jobs for FYI Films, producing tracks for other artists, sorting out the tour (which starts this weekend!) and other such silliness. On top of all that, I now want to take up a new hobby: guitar-building. It's strange - I always need something... 'new' to learn from or be inspired by. Always. It's a strange addiction that I can't curb. Turning to music isn't much of an option. The last great album I bought (and by great album, I mean one of those discs where listening to the whole album from beginning to end is more satisfying than listening to a couple of hte singles) was Green Day's 'American Idiot', and the last one before that was the Darkness' debut. Nothing has tickled my fancy since, leading me to back-track to great oldies like Nazareth (and no, 'Love Hurts' is not the only single these guys put out. In fact, I reckon it's their weakest when put against 'Hair of the Dog' or 'Black Betty'). Turning to movies isn't much of an option either. The majority of movies I've been watching are big-ass blockbusters, which are fun, but don't exactly inspire me to greatness (although last night I watched 'Brick' which was fucking cool, even though it kinda starts off dodgy). The last inspiring movie I saw was 'Hustle & Flow', and that was a while back. Sound engineering? Theory's pretty much learnt. Anything new I can learn is only gonna come from experience, and that's gonna take me the rest of my life so it's pretty much a given. The thrill of searching for articles and information and books on the subject is pretty much dead. Books? Comics? No such luck. I can only think of two comics I want to pick up: the new 'Fables' (which I heard was one of the interim issues) and the Garth Ennis run on Ghost Rider. I still find it strange yet highly ammusing that Marvel hired Mr. Ennis. Reading his 'Punisher' had me in stitches. So it's time for a new hobby. And it looks like that hobby is guitar-making/building/whatever. That zest, that craving for information and knowledge is back. Unfortunately, it's also probably one of the toughest hobbies I could have chosen. For starters, it involves woodwork. I was never good at woodwork. I don't have the patience for woodwork. Creative Design Technology was the one thing I got a 'C' in during my GCSE's, simply because I couldn't make anything I designed. I could design like a motherfucker, with blueprints, insane yet logical schematics, etc. But give me a saw and a block of wood and I can't even cut a straight line. Shit, I can't hammer a nail straight! Thankfully, (a) I'm not making an acoustic guitar and (b) I've got Alel of X-Cited Screamers helping me out. The electronics, on the other hand, I don't mind. Always loved electronics. Always loved physics in general. The only problem during my education was that I was cursed with the dullest physics teachers in existence. Seriously. A long time ago I wanted to be a scientist, for God's sake (probably because of Back to the Future, the A-Team and Macguyver) and all these teachers pretty much made me destroy that dream with a large troll hammer. Maths comes into play when it comes to designing a guitar, too: calculating tension, fret distance, pickup output, etc. Not too worried about the math. Another thing that's involved with guitar work that I was never good at is painting. I can't paint for nuts. I can draw, I know that, but when it comes to painting the fucker I'm dead in the water. I know I'm not exactly painting the Mona Lisa on the plank of wood that will be my guitar, but even then. I don't trust myself with paint. So why, God, WHY am I picking this, of all things, as my new hobby? Three reasons: 1. I'm lefty. Thus, I am left with only standard model guitars as a choice. To have those other, more interesting guitars will cost me a bomb (example - left handed Fender '72 Tele-thinline: 800 pounds, 200 pounds more expensive than its right handed brother). 2. I'm curious. It's my damn instrument, I should know how it works, godammit. 3. Why not? I'm gonna be starting up a new category soon, showing a pictoral progress, of sorts. Which will probably make me lose some of my audience. Ah well. I've been bloody busy, that's where I've been. Busy busy busy as a busy beaver building twenty four beaver dams and has just been told he has to work 17 extra shifts as there's a huge flood coming their way. Very busy indeed. Since we last communicated, right after I discovered 'Ciplak' was postponed to October I 'lost' two thousand ringgit. In cold. Hard. Cash. Somehow it dissapeared out of my wallet but the rest of the money in my wallet was left unscathed. My girlfriend thinks it was the maid. Saiful thinks it was a toyol. I personal feel it was life beating me down to the ground before lifting me up, offering me a candy and discovering I've actually been offered a turd wrapped in a Werther's original wrapper. That was a bad day indeed. Then it was launch business, sorting out the Y2k launch which took a tremendous amount of work and an insane amount of fucked-up-ness along the way, leading to not much sleep at all for all those concerned. But we pulled it off, and it was fucking fun. It was the first time my parents would see me play in both my bands, the press were there and right after the set I had never felt more like a rock star in my entire life as people swarmed asking for us to sign their copies of the album. This probably won't happen again so I'm enjoying it as much as I can. Now we've got all the other crap to sort out as well as other jobs in the pipeline and my left arm is in a complete shambles. In truth, it's turned into a jellyfish: week and floppy and any attempt to lift it up causes severe pain. And I'm left handed. Great. This led to me falling asleep at 8am, even though I went to bed at three. So what did I do, lying awake in bed in the dark? Well, I switched my light on, took out a piece of paper and started to design a guitar I'm planning to build. And before you ask, no. My mind rarely switches off and allows me to relax. Such is life. |
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I don't know whose cat this is. I have no idea where he came from. I don't know why it's here.