Lucky Crack Pipes n' Dancin' Souls

I don't know if there are any other movies out this year where an A-list actor such as Nicholas Cage can be found stopping the air supply to a senior citizen whilst pointing a gun at another senior citizen with the bug-shot eyes of a crack head as pictured above but you'll find it all in 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans'.

I remember when I first heard about this a year ago, though I can't remember who I had the conversation with:-

"Hey, you remember that movie by Abel Ferarra called 'Bad Lieutenant' with Harvey Keitel?"

"Yeah?"

"They're gonna remake it."

"Fuck off. Who's remaking it?"

"Werner Herzog."

"What?! Fuck off! Who's acting in it?"

"Nicholas Cage."

"Fuck. Off."

It all sounded like a bad joke till I saw the teaser poster whilst they were in the midst of production and sure enough, there it was - Nicholas Cage, in a film by Werner Herzog.

Then I heard that it wasn't a remake, or a re-imagining, or whatever. It was a completely different story. Sure, it was about a lieutenant who was bad but that was the only similarity. I was still unsure what to make of it until Ain't It Cool News posted a sneak preview trailer.

(The above isn't exactly like the one that I saw, but pretty close. You can watch the official trailer by clicking here.)

Now I was curious. Though some may hate his acting style, I do enjoy my dose of the Cage, depending of course on what he's in, and he's been in some major turkeys recently. This, however, got my hopes up a bit. The thought of Nicholas Cage going crazy after tokes from his lucky crack pipe and seeing iguanas whilst humping hookers was intriguing, so when I finally got a chance to check it out I watched with a certain level of expectations.

And the verdict? Mmm... so-so.

There are some insane moments in the movie indeed, most of them glimpsed in the trailer above, but the trailer also gives the impression that the Cage would be this insane throughout the movie, which he isn't. In actuality, it's a build up in nuttiness that all starts when the Cage rescues a prisoner in a cell flooding with water during hurricane Katrina and ends up with a severe back injury which requires him to take a lot of painkillers.  From painkillers he moves to cocaine, swiped from the evidence storage room. From there, he starts stealing drugs from the people he busts. Then he goes on to crack and does even more bad things, culminating in him rolling with the drug dealer (played by Xzibit) that he was trying to lock up at the beginning of the movie.

And as the movie progresses, we are treated with random iguana and lizard cams, Cage doing drugs and assaulting a senior citizen. Not continuously but evenly peppered throughout the movie. And though the sight of Cage in those moments when he goes nuts is fun, the question remains -

What is the point of the movie?

In the original 'Bad Lieutenant' directed by Abel Fererra, the entire film was unrepentant and unflinching. From the start, Harvey Keitel is a Bad Cop.

The type of Bad Cop that would take away the money that two thieves steal from a convenience store then steal from the convenience store himself whilst the owner's making a statement at the station. The type of Bad Cop that would let two under-aged girls who are sneaking out to go clubbing get away with it as long as one of them shows him her ass and the other pretends to suck a cock whilst he masturbates to the sight of them doing so in the middle of a street. The type of Bad Cop that would make bets he can't pay for and shoots his own car radio when the bets don't work out.

And, more importantly, there's a point to the movie. As Harvey Keitel goes along with all his Bad Things, a nun is raped by two young punks and though he thinks he'll find retribution for all these Bad Things by finding and punishing those responsible he discovers that the nun is so devout that she forgives her rapists, leading to Keitel trying to figure out how he can truly find some form of retribution leading to a powerful and incredibly downbeat ending. There's a strong story amidst the Badness (along with Keitel giving a one man show tour-de-force throughout the entire movie... including getting his schlong out).

'Port of Call New Orleans' does feature Cage doing a one man show too, but I can't see the point to the movie. The underlying plot of it all. The reason for the movie's existence. The only point that I can see is that it shows how a cop can go from bad to worse but then again, not really. And the fact that we get to see this transition and the point where it all started kinda takes the power away from the badness. We sympathize with Cage's character not because of his performance making us feel for a flawed character, but because we know that he's suffering severe pain from a back injury sustained whilst saving a criminal's life. It gives the chronic drug abuse a reason, albeit a bad one.

I know that since the only relation the two movies have is the name, but I can't help but compare the two. Keitel was bad from the get go. We never know why he did so many Bad Things. He has a wife, he's got kids, yet he sleeps with whores, snorts coke, gambles and steals. We never know why. In 'Port of Call...' Cage has his back issue. His girlfriend is a prostitute but not a street walker, more an escort - and by the end of the movie she turns away from her wicked ways. Then there's his parents - mom's an alcoholic and dad's a recovering alcohol. There are so many reasons as to why he'd be taking drugs and turning to the 'dark side' and by the end of the movie he learns nothing and gains nothing and neither do we.

However, like I said, it's not entirely fair to compare the two as their both completely different movies. And, to be honest, we could do with more movies like 'Port of Call...' Last year Millennium Films released 'Rambo IV' which wasn't a great movie by any means and also didn't really have a point to it all but it was bug-nuts crazy and fun. In fact, I can't see any point at all to the movie besides watching Stallone kill a lot of people in the most gruesome, insane and illogical manner possible.

The only point in watching 'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans' is to watch Nicolas Cage go cookoo on crack. And there's nothing wrong with that. Especially in this day and age where movies are getting progressively sanitized and pre-packaged for megabuck opening weekends it's good to know that there are still some films out there that don't cater to the entire mass public yet featuring enough known actors that it can safely find distribution and an audience.

To quote Massawyrm from Ain't It Cool News,

The first thing you need to know about BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS is that it is NOT a good movie. It’s not meant to be. It’s a bad movie, a movie so WTF awful at times that you can only cock your head and shake it baffled at what you are seeing. So why are people going gaga for it? Because it is an AWESOME movie; a funny as fuck and meant to be bad every step of the way.

'Nuff said.

Hitler was screwed by Basterds

At least, according to Tarantino.

The story of 'Inglorious Basterds' has been around for so long that one wondered whether QT was ever gonna do it at all. At one point he was supposed to do it after 'Jackie Brown' but ended up doing Kill Bill instead. Then he was supposedly going to do it again but instead did 'Grindhouse'. And then, one day, he jokingly said his next movie was not going to be Basterds because every time he says it is it never happens.

So his next movie actually became 'Inglorious Basterds'.

Now, I'm not saying I didn't enjoy Kill Bill I & II. I did enjoy those movies. But it didn't leave me as reeling and as excited as usual. I loved 'Death Proof' more than 'Planet Terror' when Grindhouse came out but it still didn't feel completely like a Tarantino movie.

Then this comes along. From the moment I saw the first trailer that came out which consisted pretty much entirely of Brad Pitt's brilliant recruitment speech I was sold. By the time I saw the second trailer, I couldn't wait.

And it sure didn't disappoint.

I remember when the world first went crazy over Brad Pitt, especially the women. They raved and swooned about him, especially over 'Legends of the Fall'. I wasn't impressed.

Then 'Seven' rolled around, followed by '12 Monkeys', and I started formulating a theory that the shorter his hair was, the better his acting was. In the end, however, I just find him to be a brilliant actor and movie star. Especially after 'Fight Club'. The man is insanely talented and it's in roles like this, where he gets to shoot off larger-than-life characters such as Lt. Aldo Raine, that he is a pleasure to watch from beginning to end.

However, the most stand out actor of the lot has to be Mr. Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa.

The opening scene that starts off the entire movie showcases both Tarantino's return to form at brilliant wordplay as well as the sheer genius of this actor - just two people having a conversation as the tension ratchets up with every word uttered. In most World War II movies playing the Nazi often leads to performances of pure, unadulterated evil and completely unsympathetic.

Christopher Waltz doesn't just give off the necessary menace, but we also find ourselves admiring the dude. We fear for the characters that are put on his path but at the same time we don't hate him. Whilst the SS officer in the film is your straight-up menacing Nazi that we're all accustomed to Col. Landa is a different kettle of fish. And with his multi-lingual savvy he may as well be called a different kettle of babel fish.

But what truly makes this movie great is that though it is set in World War II and it's landscape is based on history, it's story couldn't be far removed from it.

This is a film where Eli Roth's character nickname is 'The Bear Jew'...

...where British soldiers talk with that wonderfully old school matinee idol proper accent...

...where Hitler feels like a blundering buffoon...

...and where the entire war is ended in one single night with the power of cinema and the flamability of old film stock.

Though the opening scene was brilliant, there is a moment in the movie that had me loving this movie a hundred times more and had my eyes glued on the flick from then on in. After all the scenes we see of World War II, though fictional still very much plausible, we are introduced to Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, a former Nazi who defected and joined the Basterds (played by Til Schweiger who I haven't seen in flicks since 'SLC Punk').

The thing is, I didn't get most of the explanation because I was laughing my ass off. Why? Because all of a sudden we are treated to a flashback of Sgt. Hugo... with 70's funk and a voice over by Samuel L. Jackson.

I couldn't contain myself. It was such a completely out-of-place moment of insane movie referencing that wouldn't work in any other hands but Tarantino's and I loved every minute of it. From then on, the movie became a hundred times more fun.

And speaking of laughter, there are many moments in this movie where I found myself in stitches as there's so much humor in it. Black humor, yes, but humor nonetheless amidst the cartoon violence. After all, this is supposed to be a World War II movie, right? And yet, amidst it all, we are treated to a hilarious moment that would fit any comedy where Lt. Raine and his men pose as Italian filmmakers to attend the premiere of a Nazi movie even though they can't speak Italian for nuts!

Real farcical stuff that again shouldn't work but it does. In fact, this entire movie shouldn't work, it just plain shouldn't, but it does because of Tarantino's inherent talent of knowing all the rules of movies and knowing just how to turn those rules against us in such a way that it should not be possible but still making it so.

I loved this movie. Flat out loved it. It's a Tarantino movie that I can honestly say I love without trying to make excuses for it and the last movie of his I could honestly do the same was 'Pulp Fiction'. Along with 'Star Trek', this is my favorite movie of the year so far and I don't know if any other flick of the year can match it.

Pictures taken from AceShowBiz.com and IMDB.

Baby Rats and Squirrel Taming

I was sat with the Tamagotchi watching 'Inglorious Basterds' and enjoying every minute of it, when the Tamagotchi turned to me and said, "there's a rat under your table".

I paused the movie, confused. "Where?" I asked.

"Look right there," she said as she got up and quietly went to the right side of my work desk, ready to shake my laptop bag in an effort to spook the rat out of hiding, "wait for it."

She shook the bag, and I saw a tiny furry creature that looked more like an innocent door mouse scurry left-side with it's tiny little feet.

Sonuvabitch. We tried for a while to get it out but to no avail, so we decided to let it be for now, even though deep down I wanted that baby rat to leave, cute or not. I had no issues with it as a creature, but I had definite issues with it with regards to it's teeth and the many computer and audio cables that snake about my work area.

It explained the weird sounds I'd been hearing over the past few days coming from the kitchen and my surrounding areas. It must've snuck in when I had the windows and doors open to air the place out in the day before switching on the air conditioning at night. And now it was somewhere in the house, scurrying about.

The next day, I was awoken by the sound of its tiny feet scurrying about.

Whilst I was asleep, I had woken up at some points thinking the little bugger was on my feet, though I'm quite sure I was just dreaming as I don't know any rat, especially a baby rat, with the guts to actually scurry up on a human, sit on its feet while its sleeping, and watch the human sleep. That would a be a disturbed rat and I have no interest in such disturbed rats.

Regardless, I woke up early in the morning to the sound of its feet behind one of my filing cabinets. I quietly tip-toed to the area where I heard the sound and that's where I saw it.

Nibbling on year-old rat poison.

I totally forgot the rat poison was there and thought I'd gotten rid of most of it. A year ago we discovered a big rat hiding about upstairs, so my mother stuck rat poison everywhere to get rid of it. At some point the rat got trapped in one of the store rooms and stupidly ate all the rat poison and, in its death throes that seemed to last hours, it kept banging at the door, chewing at the wood, trying to break free before it died.

It was a huge fucking rat.

This one was tiny, about the size of a teenage hamster, but it had the propensity to grow into a fat rat and though I wasn't having any of that, I didn't like the idea of this tiny little baby rat dying the same death. That last rate was a huge motherfucker that would eat antique furniture. This one was itsy bitsy and could have a bright and illustrious future chewing on the many refuse found lying about in Uptown where rats and cats live in harmony.

If only it would get out of my damn house.

The second it saw me, it scurried off. I went back to sleep. Then I heard it again. I went over to the same spot and there it was, chewing on the rat poison again.

This rat poison must be pretty tasty, huh?

Again, it ran off when it saw me. The area it was in was less than a meter away from the sliding glass door, so I slid it open and waited, hoping it would leave.

But the fucker didn't.

This whole issue with the rat reminded me of my UK years when we discovered squirrels in the house. We came home one day and my dad walked into his bedroom to find a squirrel hanging from the curtain. It turned around with the surprised look of a woman being caught unawares in the shower before scampering throughout the house whereupon my friends and I went chasing after it.

In the end we found three squirrels in the house, one after the other, and I still had some hamster cages so we put them in there for the time being.

The squirrels then started making a weird sound, all together in unison, for quite a while. We then found out why.

There, in my dad's bedroom, was the Mommy Squirrel.

We thought the squirrels we caught were huge but they were nothing. Mommy Squirrel was big. It was huge and furry and fast as fuck.

And it was pissed.

My friends and I tried to catch her the same way we caught the other squirrels - by hand - but Mommy Squirrel was having none of it. Her teeth were huge and she didn't mind using them, snapping away at us whenever we got close. Her claws were sharp and vicious and she wasn't gonna be played like a fool.

My dad was pissed and started yelling at Mommy Squirrel, attacking it and giving it shit until finally, with the aid of a thick rag cloth, he managed to catch her and dumped her outside.

But here's the thing - how did they get in? Well, it was discovered much later that there was a hole somewhere in the roof which gave them access to my parents' bedroom, so Mommy Squirrel could come back any time.

And Mommy Squirrel held a grudge.

Meanwhile, we had her children and had no idea what to do with them. My parents had some stuff to do and then after that they were going to take the squirrels to the park nearby to set them free. Until then, I had ample time to bond with the squirrels.

So we all sat down and watched 'Yo! MTV Raps!'

What followed was weird on many levels. The squirrels kept crying for Mommy Squirrel, but after a while their eyes started to turn to the television and after a while they were transfixed to the imagery that came with the sound of the Wu Tang Clan, Cypress Hill and Dr. Dre. I don't know whether it was the music or the videos themselves, but these squirrels started keeping quiet, eyes fixed on the television, mesmerized, hypnotized, tamed. So tame, in fact, that I opened up one of the cages and started stroking one of the squirrels and it let me, eyes fixed on Mobb Deep's vid for 'Shook Ones'. Perhaps the videos have a subliminal message, perhaps it's the music, I don't know, but it was weird nonetheless.

Second I switched off the TV they were making their crying noises again.

Later that day my parents let the squirrels go in the park but Mommy Squirrel still held a grudge, a very specific grudge against my dad. I'd heard stories of this. Some Malays believe that you should never yell at the creatures you find in your house or surrounding areas, be they vermin, insect, lizard, whatever. You shouldn't yell at them, shouldn't give them shit and shouldn't attack them viciously because they will remember you. And this Mommy Squirrel remembered my dad.

The next day my dad came home to find his clothes ripped up. Not just any clothes at random, mind. It was the exact clothes he wore on the day he gave Mommy Squirrel shit. Mommy Squirrel didn't touch my mom's clothes, she didn't touch the other clothes, just the ones my dad wore yesterday.

After that my dad stepped outside and apologized out in the garden to Mommy Squirrel, hoping she'd hear. We then found the hole and sealed it up and never heard a thing from the squirrels again.

Back to the present - remembering this event of the squirrels in the past, I tried to reason with the rat. I went to the center of my house and called out for it.

"Hey. Look, buddy, I'm not looking for any trouble, alright? So if you just keep to yourself and I'll keep to myself we'll work this out, ok? I'd prefer it if you leave but if you've gotta stick around just don't make a mess or bite my cables or poop everywhere, alright buddy? Please. Thank you."

Later that night I was working at my desk and turned to find the rat starring at me on the floor by the piano on my right. I looked at the rat. The rat looked back.

And then the rat fucked off into the piano.

I opened the sliding door again and tried to coax the rat to leave but it was having none of it. He liked it here and it looked like there was nothing I could do about it.

"Look," I told the rat, "just stop bugging me and everything'll be alright."

But the rat didn't listen. Perhaps it didn't speak English.

The next day I came home in the evening, took off my shoes and brought my groceries into the kitchen, where I found the rat sitting on the stove, starring at me once again.

What the fuck is this, man, Mousehunt?

He scurried under the stove and I quickly closed the door. I then went to the other doors and closed them too. Finally, I opened up the door leading to the back garden, just wide enough for the rat to leave.

I then tried to coax the rat out of the stove but instead of heading the direction I'd hoped, he zoomed off underneath my brand new fridge. I took a broom and tried to coax him out but he was having none of it so instead I had to move the entire fridge.

Halfway through, the little bugger finally took the hint and scurried to the first door - locked! Second door - locked! Door to the back garden - bingo!

And finally, the rat has left me.

But I still worry. Right now the windows and doors are open. I'm a smoker and male, I need to air out the house every day otherwise weird smells will accumulate. And the rat could come in any time... or even it's mother. And God only knows what its mother looks like. Perhaps it's one of those Uptown rats, the ones that stomp all over my roof and sound like freerunners. Perhaps the rat that died upstairs was its husband. Perhaps it wants revenge.

Shit. I think I heard something coming from the kitchen.

Get Up, Stand Up

The man pictured above is Jasper Carrott, and was my first memory of stand-up comedy.

I remember he had a weekly show which would involve stand-up comedy, a skit he did about two inept detectives which latter on became a full blown sitcom called 'The Detectives" and spoofs of ads during the supposed commercial breaks (even though the BBC didn't do commercial breaks between shows, for some reason I fell for it every single time). He also had another show called "Carrott's Commerical Breakdown" where he would show a compilation of the most hilarious and insane ads from around the world.

Sure, I watched a lot of other British comedy and stand-up comedians, but when I try and think back of my very first memory of stand-up comedy, it all comes back to Jasper.

However, he wasn't the most inspiring of the stand-up comedians that I looked up to. No, that mantle belongs to the Fuck You Man:-

That's right, Eddie Murphy.

Whilst Jasper Carrott was someone I loved watching, Eddie Murphy was someone I looked up to and wanted to be. I remember catching 'Beverly Hills Cop' on TV when I was a kid and even though it was censored I loved it and from then on would always search out for his movies. The only Murphy movies I haven't seen are 'Harlem Nights', 'Norbitt' and 'Meet Dave'. I once rented his 'Best of Saturday Night Live' video from the rental store and just let the late charges build up. Before sending it back and paying the late fees I recorded all the audio onto tape so I could always play it back. I loved his ability to mimic celebrities so well, I loved his delivery, I loved his laugh, I loved it all.

And discovering his stand-up comedy was like discovering a tiny explosive charge in your brain - mind blowing.

Sure, everyone watched 'Raw' because it was the most widely available one and for me, that was the first one I watched too, but when I discovered 'Delirious' it just blew 'Raw' out of the water. To this day, it still has me in stitches.

Other stand-up comedians I've admired and aspired to over the years have included Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, Chris Rock, Mitch Hedberg and much more. I'd always loved comedy and loved writing and performing comedy, but performing stand-up was something I'd always wanted to try, at least once in my life...

...and on the first Thursday of November, I did.

The seed of attempting this first started when I heard a friend of mine who's interned as a crew member for me quite a few times named Leonard told me he was gonna try the open mic of a stand-up show. I'd been hearing that quite a few stand-up comedy shows had been steadily popping up in KL, most notably the ones organized by TimeOut KL.

A while after that I bumped into Davina outside KLPac and as we chatted I discovered that she was gonna be trying stand-up for the first time as a newcomer on the TimeOut KL Comedy Thursdays slot held every month.

A few months ago, on a completely random whim, I messaged Davina asking how I could go about trying stand-up. She hooked me up and soon, before I knew it, I had a date slotted as a newcomer.

And I had no idea what I was going to talk about.

I spent the two months before the show thinking constantly about what kind of material to do. How would I deliver it? Should I do impressions? Should I be political? Which accent would naturally pop up when I'm on stage doing stand-up - my American or my British?

I had all kinds of possible ideas - the power of Facebook, self-hating Malays, when Garmin's go wrong, the list went on, but the question remained -

Was it funny?

That's the thing about stand-up - it's a solo effort. I've been on stage countless times as a musician, an actor and as an MC, but doing stand-up comedy is scarier than anything I've ever done on stage before. When you're playing music you have your other band mates, when you're acting in a play you have the other actors. When I play solo spots I get the most nervous but even then I still have a guitar with me, so even if the audience hates my guts I can just finish the frickin' song and disappear.

With stand-up, your next line depends on whether or not the audience dug the line before that. You're entire performance depends on the audience's reaction. That is some scary shit. A lot of my friends asked me to try out my material on them but I knew it wouldn't be the same and what's worse, I'd be able to see their reaction, eye-to-eye, and I knew it would affect me too much.

My main worry was the joke-to-minute ratio. I was supposed to do five minutes and every idea I had so far required me to spend about a minute and a half to set-up the information needed for the joke to take effect. Far too long. This thought troubled me to no end.

In the meantime I was also rehearsing in a play during the weeks leading up to the moment of truth and it was at this play that I got to know Ollie, my co-actor in the play who had also done stand-up for TimeOut and, as luck would have it, was hosting the night that I'd be coming on stage as a newcomer.

This information will show its importance in a moment.

The night before the show, with still no proper material thought up, I decided to sit down and try and write out something as if I was writing a stand-up comedy scene in a script. I sat down in front of my computer after a very long and tiring day at about midnight and started writing it just like dialogue.

And if this was dialogue, the first thing the character would probably say after Ollie introduces him (me) would be to thank Ollie for the introduction.

And that's when the ideas started rolling in.

From that one sentence thanking Ollie the words started forming - from thanking Ollie to mentioning the play we were both in, from mentioning the play to comparing it to Hostel, from Hostel to sex in eighties movies, from sex in eighties movies to sexual bondage fantasies, from sexual bondage fantasies to pornography... and done.

The next day I went to the Havana Club to find my friends waiting for me. Jordan, Benji, Dique, Cammy, Shirin, Sandy, Vera, Jake, Paul, Naren and Ahmad all came to support me on my debut night. I was feeling alright, not too worried, and walked over to talk with Ollie about the set. I was feeling fine, till Ollie said,

"If you mess up and the audience doesn't find you funny, don't worry about it. We'll signal you from the side in case you should get off the stage early."

If I mess up? If they don't find me funny? That night, up until that point, the thought that I wouldn't be able to pull it off had never entered my mind until he said that. After that I was shitting bricks, nervous as hell and insanely jittery. Could I do this? Could I pull this off? Will they laugh?

Too late. Name's called. Get on stage. DO IT.

And I think I did.

I wish I could describe the reactions from the audience but in truth, it felt like a complete daze. All I have as reference is the video above which was actually trimmed down a bit due to the YouTube ten minute maximum thing and in fact, this should've been the pace of the material all along. During the last joke I had, which had a big build up, I chickened out half-way because people were starting to get quiet and I was worried that there were no laughs so I kept sticking in jokes in-between as I was setting up the final gag even though I had written it so that it required that long set-up to make the final joke really hit hard with a bang. Apart from that, based on the vid, I reckon I did ok for a first-timer.

And to all those that came and supported and all those that made it possible, thanks peeps. Another dream-come-true I can cross off the list.

Welcome to Kelantan

So a while back on Deepavali weekend I went to Kelantan for no reason whatsoever other than to get out of dodge.

It was Mien's idea in the first place. Together with Davina they both coerced me to come for the trip, even though I was quite 50/50 about the whole idea for very stupid reasons, one of which was The KL-ite Fear of PAS.

Now for the benefit of those of you who aren't residents of Malaysia, the majority of the States in Malaysia are controlled by the ruling government. However, a few of the States, such as Kelantan, are controlled by the opposition party - PAS - who are the pro-Islamic party. If you Wiki Kelantan, you'll find out more about this and, as you can imagine, this filled me with a bit of fear with regards to the trip.

For starters, I live in KL which is supposed to be the most liberal of all the States yet I can throw a rock anywhere and probably find a Muslim resident who would look down at my lifestyle, especiallly my Western mode of thinking, so the thought of going to a State that appeared to be more oppressive than the State I was living in did fill me with some trepidation.

Trepidation that proved to be unfounded.

Mien booked overnight tickets on a train for us. I hadn't been on a train in a while, so the thought of pimpin' off in a carriage was kinda cool. However, it was a 12 hour ride (give or take an hour) so we had to figure out something to occupy the time which involved (a) playing with Davina's silicone booby pads, (b) shooting a random short film and (c) chit-chatting till we all got tired and fell asleep.

Well, at least Mien and Davina fell asleep. I'd always had trouble falling asleep in these bunks due to my height and the fact that there's no storage space for luggage so to keep your bags safe you've got to keep them in the bunk with you.

Even on the ride there, though, I was a bit nervous - the majority of the train was filled with Kelantanese Malays, some of them even passing the time reading religious passages and there I was, hanging out with two Chinese girls whilst throwing silicone tits at a window.

We arrived in Kelantan the next morning where Mien's mom came to pick us up and before we even went to their house we made a stop at a Buddhist temple to have some nasi kerabu for breakfast.

The nasi kerabu was out of this world. I'm not usually a fan of the stuff, but this one I could keep eating non-stop, it was so damn good. And the kicker? It only cost RM1. One solid buck, that's it. My canned drink cost RM1.50, for God's sake!

And the fact that we were at a Buddhist temple with an absolutely gorgeous Buddha statue made me realize how wrong all my thoughts were about Kelantan.

Excuse me for my ignorance, all you Kelantanese that read this, but the thought of beautiful Buddhist temples in an orthodox Islamic State was hard to wrap my head around. And after breakfast, Mien brought us to even more Buddhist temples, each one very beautiful and incredibly Thai (Kelantan's on the border, non-Malaysians). So Thai in fact, that every time we drove in to check out one of the temples it felt like we just went through a Stargate and ended up in Thailand.

And the surrounding areas were just beautiful. Huge palm trees looming above us, fresh coconut milk to cool off to on a hot day, pure bliss.

After the visits to the Buddhist temples we went back to Mien's to rest for a bit before taking a walk around the kampung in Mien's hood, where padi fields still exist and some of the houses are still made of wood. The village people were friendly and we passed by the bridge pictured above that had a whole Huck' Finn feel to it. After that Mien went to a relative's wedding and Davina and I went out for dinner at a small Thai restaurant. Verdict? Better than any overpriced Thai joint in the city, that's for sure.

The next morning we woke up before dawn to go see the sun rise by the beach. At first we thought we wouldn't be able to see the sun come up over the horizon due to the large rain clouds. We then discovered this was a blessing as the sun rise looked like this:

Mien and Davina were the first to jump in.

I followed shortly after I kept my camera safe. I hadn't been in the water in a long time, especially in the sea, for two reasons. Firstly, I hadn't been on holiday in a long time. Secondly, I was very self conscious of my huge belly. Fortunately, I'd been losing weight over the months before this trip so I wasn't too worried. Unfortunately, I discovered a new reason to not get in the water - jellyfish.

I waded through the long shallow end till we got to somewhere deep enough to warrant swimming, and literally only swam a few strokes before I felt a stinging in my foot.

"Ow," I said.

I kept trying to swim, thinking my foot grazed something sharp on the sea bed, but it started stinging even more.

"Ow... ow... ow... OWWWW...!"

I then hopped back to shore. And stared at what looked like a disturbing rash, red and swollen, with a definite thin trail going across my foot. Mien was adamant that there's never been any sightings of jellyfish on Kelantan shores, and if it was a jellyfish, I was the first in Kelantan to be stung by one.

And before you ask, nobody had any pee in them to test out the theory on soothing jellyfish stings.

The ladies put me in the car and we drove off to find the nearest 24 hour clinic, which was in town. When we got there, we discovered that whilst it was open, the doctor just left. Thankfully, my foot got better and the swelling went down so instead we went for breakfast - nasi berlauk.

The sambal was to die for.

The next visit was pretty cool considering I had worked on 15Malaysia - it was the market where Amir Muhammad shot "The Tree" for the project with PAS leader Nik Aziz.

Agriculture is one of the main industries in Kelantan and here you can see why. However, there was one thing I discovered that didn't put a smile on Mien and Davina's face.

Turtle eggs.

For those not in the know, turtle eggs are a delicacy found only on the east coast of Malaysia. At night, when the turtle comes to shore to lay eggs, the eggs are stolen right from the whole under the turtles' punanny. To eat the eggs (which look like sunken ping-pong balls), one pokes a hole and sucks out the contents.

One can't find turtle eggs as often and as openly as you could back in the day for obvious wildlife conservation reasons, but you still find them every once in a while. My mom had actually asked me to pick some up for her, but considering I was travelling with an activist and an animal-rescuing environmentalist, I knew this wasn't going to happen. The second they saw the eggs they both turned to me and yelled, "don't even think about buying these for your mom! We'll kill you!"

They may look petite, but there's fire in them ladies.

All that aside, however, it was here that I realized something else - whilst many would have you believe that women are living in constant prejudice under the rules of Islam in this State, the majority of the sellers here are women.

As Baki pointed out to me after seeing this pic, these flowers are used for a ritual known as 'mandi bunga sial', whereupon one is cleansed in water soaked in various flowers to dispel bad luck and practiced amongst many different Asian cultures. Some here in Malaysia would have you believe that doing so is wrong for Muslims as it is not a proper Islamic practice and taken from different cultures.

Well, as the pic above and the rest of the blog suggests, Nik Aziz doesn't seem to have an issue with different cultures, be it mandi bunga or Buddhist temples.

And that was the main thing I discovered - though we may think of the PAS states as dogmatic and orthodox, they are by their nature much more tolerant than most in KL.  If there's one thing I discovered on this trip it's this - don't believe the hype. Throughout the whole way there and for most of my time there I was dreading some form of random religious persecution, some pious man or woman giving me shit for something or other, lecturing me, bringing down God's thunder and lightning, very very frightening EEK!

But it never happened. Never ever. They're a lot more tolerant, a lot more laid back and a lot more open. I'm sure they could tell without me opening my mouth that I wasn't from Kelantan and I had always thought that I'd be looked upon with disgust - "Hey, look, it's one of them Malays from KL, the ones that live in a world of sin. Fucker should be stoned with hefty rocks." Instead everywhere we went we were greeted with absolute hospitality and it felt honest and genuine. When I spoke to Mien's father he didn't have a single complaint living in Kelantan as a Chinese Malaysian. In fact, he loved it.

That's the thing, you see - all the different cultures treat each other with respect and treat each other's customs with respect. And sure, this was all seen with the rose tinted glasses of someone visiting Kelantan properly for the first time (I'd been there before when I was younger, but don't remember much) but whenever I check with others that I know who are from there or been there, they all say the same thing - don't believe the hype.

So please, don't believe the hype and please do visit the place. Because, as this post and the video below hopefully proves, Kelantan Rocks.

(Incidentally, if you open up the vid on YouTube itself for some reason all the 'Related Videos' are apparently of Kelantan chicks sucking cock. Either the sex life in Kelantan is healthy, or 'awek Kelantan' is the Malay fantasy equivalent of 'Catholic school girl').

Fight the Power (Company)

For those of you who don't know, one of the many dudes along for the ride on the trip I took to Pusan was controversial rapper Namewee who caused a bit of a ruckus with his song "Negara-kuku". The dude also appeared in two of the 15Malaysia shorts, namely 'Potong Saga' by Ho Yuhang and 'Meter' by Benji n' Bahir.

A while back, after the trip, Namewee posted up a video on YouTube and Facebook which featured him giving workers of the local power company TNB a good sounding after a black out caused him to lose songs that he was in the midst of composing as well as effecting his younger brother who was in the midst of revising for an exam the next day.

The video, however, is not the subject of this post. The reaction to it is what I'm concerned about, after reading this article from theStar.com.my:-

CONTROVERSIAL rapper Wee Meng Chee or Namewee, who gained notoriety in 2007 for his rap song, Negarakuku, is at it again.

His latest tirade, which was made into a short film and posted on YouTube, was aimed at Tenaga Nasional Bhd after his home in Muar, Johor, was hit by a blackout last month.

Sin Chew Daily quoted Information, Communications, Culture and Arts Ministry’s secretary-general Datuk Kamaruddin Siaraf as saying the ministry has launched an investigation into the matter.

He said the ministry would only decide on the next course of action once the investigation was completed.

He emphasised that TNB itself could take action against Wee if the utility company feels that the film had seriously affected the company’s image.

In the film, Wee was seen lashing out at several workers at the TNB’s Muar branch office after he was said to have been given the run around.

He claimed that he was composing his new song on his computer when the blackout shut down his central processing unit causing him to lose the file which he did not save.

His younger brother too was affected as he could not do his revision and he was facing an examination the next day, he claimed.

Wee then made at least 10 calls to TNB hoping to get an explanation over but nobody picked up the calls.

He then went to the office and was seen hurling abusive language at the workers before leaving the building.

> China Press quoted Hakka Association chief Tan Sri Ng Teck Fong as saying that the MCA’s current leadership could easily resolve the problems facing the party.

“What is important is that the party must be stable to prevent further cracks,” he was quoted.

The daily also quoted Federation of Chinese Associations Malaysia (Hua Zong) president Tan Sri Pheng Yin Huah as saying that the federation would not intervene in MCA’s internal matters.

I don't even know where to begin with this article. First off, what in the name of Odin's nut fur has this incident got to do with the Ministry of Information, Communications, Culture and Arts? What, I ask? Is every video blog posted by someone who's considered an 'artist' or 'celebrity', no matter how big or small, a matter that this particular Ministry has to stick their nose in? What about regular people, do they get the same treatment, or does nobody bother with them? Are they considering the internet as a form of media akin to television, thus making it fall under the same jurisdiction as television and film programming or even live performances?

In what insane, roundabout, fuzzy logic way does this fall under the jurisdiction of this Ministry? Because it's entertaining and informative? Does the Ministry honestly intend to apply the same rules that govern television, film and public performances onto the fucking internet?

Am I in trouble now for writing the word 'fuck'?

Secondly, is TNB seriously considering taking action? Seriously? Regardless of the celebrity status of a person using their services, that person is still a customer. Is TNB seriously considering taking legal action against a customer simply because the customer was dissatisfied with their product? Because if that's the case, why not have Proton and Perodua sue Jeremy Clarkson for every bad review he's given to every locally made car we've sent to England?

Monopoly or not, TNB is still a company offering a service. When a customer, whoever the customer may be, reacts so strongly at the poor quality of the service and in such a high profile way, is the wisest action to sue the guy?

Thirdly (and perhaps this is due to my ignorance of politics), what has MCA got to do with all of it? Do those last three paragraphs play any role in the news above or is it a layout issue, showing other news but placed as if it was related to the same thing? If so, it's frickin' confusing. If not, then I ask again - what has MCA politics got to do with a Chinese rapper giving TNB shit for a power cut? I don't get it. I admit, I'm incredibly ignorant of the political climate in my own country (simply because I couldn't give two poops of a laden calf) so maybe there's a bigger picture I'm not getting. If anyone could explain the relevance of that last part of the article that would be helpful.

Regardless, this makes my head bones weep.

Constant Bloggery

I remember when I first started a blog, years ago, on 20six.co.uk. At the time everyone was just beginning to realize how pointless Friendster was and MySpace was getting more and more emo as the days progressed. And Facebook? Facebook wasn't even an idea yet.

For years I wrote on my 20six blog, sometimes three or four times a day, as I'd wait for the designers and art directors to do all the heavy time consuming work in the advertising agency I worked in. Most of the time I'd either be blogging about my frustrations with the advertising industry or my attempts to become a filmmaker.

Then, after The Troubles, I switched blog sites from 20six to Terapad due to 20six's server issues as well as in an attempt to run away from The Troubles, all the while keeping a certain level of censorship with my writings at a level I'd never done before.

The thing is, with the advent of Facebook I began to question the point of my blog in the first place. Most of the people who read my blog were my friends on Facebook anyway, and the main reason I wrote under the pseudonym 'Justin Guber' was so that only my friends knew the blog was mine. With Facebook, that's not really an issue. And besides, Terapad was beginning to get tedious with it's blogging system and layout constraints. As for The Troubles, I don't feel a need to run away from them anymore, but 20six hasn't exactly improved.

The question, however, remains - what need is there for a blog now?

I've been thinking about this for the past month or so and was very close to just getting rid of my blog altogether, but the fact of the matter is I've had a blog since about 2003 and there are a lot of memories in those old posts. And, at the end of the day, one of the main reasons I kept a blog was to keep me writing - to keep the act of putting words together fresh.

So this was my decision - to move to a blogging site that suited all my needs, consolidate all my posts from my two other blogs onto the site and get rid of the old blogs. That way, it would all be in one place and I'd always have a spot to write. After a night of searching around everywhere, I finally decided on Blogger since it's come a long way from the format it used to have, and I began to set out the task of moving all my posts over to this site.

But the biggest difference? The biggest difference of the lot? No more 'Justin Guber'. There's not really any need to use that name anymore. I've come a long way since those early days and if I write something here I should have the balls to stick by it regardless the outcome.

So here it is - exguber.blogspot.com - my new blog with all the old content still in it. This is the blog of Khairil M. Bahar, An Ex-Guber now comfortable with his own skin without adopting a false European name.

This is where I shall write all my brain poop, and where all my past brain poop shall remain.

And it's a lot of past brain poop - the archives include everything up until the end of 2004 (I couldn't get the posts before that because apparently there was spyware embedded on those pages). Through the blog categories you can find the entire process of the making of 'Ciplak', from it's conception all the way to the trip to LA, just by clicking the 'Ciplak' link in the 'browse' section on your right, as well as the movie that I was supposed to make before I made 'Ciplak' called 'Celup'.

If you're interested in that sort of rubbish, anyway.

The old 'Shocking Asia' links are back as well as all the other randomness, five years of randomness to be precise, that was constantly spewed onto the internet as time passed at work.

I don't know how many people will start reading through this blog, or go through the archives, or anything. There may not be any point to this blog as far as the future and present is concerned.

But at least the past is kept safely - not forgotten, not discarded, not mulled over repetitiously. I know where it is, and whenever I want I can look back at it and smile.

Or laugh at how childish some of my posts were back in the day. I swear, I really didn't realize I used to rant so much.

Pimpin' In Pusan

So it's been a while since I've blogged. A helluva while. And though there are many recent events and thoughts in my head that I wish to blog I can't let the past few months go unnoticed, now can I? That'd be like buying a 5 disc DVD series with one disc in the middle missing and wondering halfway why Jack Bauer went from fighting his old partner to suddenly stopping the Candyman from killing the female president.

Throughout the middle of the year you could say I was going through a... transitional phase. A lot of things hadn't worked out and I realized more and more that I'd been slowly transforming into the Fat Angry Man which is not the type of future I had envisioned for myself. For a good three months I didn't have any jobs coming in either, so I spent most of that time trying to figure out where it all went wrong, trying to figure out how to make things better, how to make myself better and how to crack an egg without getting yolk all over the rim of the frying pan.

So slowly I exercised and controlled my diet so I could lose weight and figured out what was the source of so much of my anger and frustration and after a while I went from being an Angry Fat Man to just a Man. I got by with a lil' help from my friends and picked myself up, bit by bit, and it felt good to be just a Man again.

Then I took a trip to Pusan with the 15Malaysia peeps and went from Man to Pimp.

The moment I got to the airport, before we'd even boarded, I already felt different. Better. Things were a little more fun. The whole time beforehand I'd been worried about whether or not I'd have any fun on the trip for some reason. There was the fear of being trapped in an unknown country feeling emo. Thankfully, that wasn't the case.

Straight away we started to naturally form our little cliques - the people that we'd most probably hang out with throughout the entire trip. It wasn't really segregation, as we all hung out with each other at some point, but for most of the trip I had a specific set of peeps:-

Jordan

One half of the Suleiman brothers (Dique couldn't make it because of health reasons), those responsible for the excellent 'Rojak' short film for 15Malaysia which I also acted in.

I'd known Jordan since we were 16 back in Concord College in England. I played in my first proper band with the dude and I've seen his company 'Voxel' grow as the years go by. The Pusan trip was the first time in a long time that I'd hung out with the dude for a long period of time. Second we met at the airport we just went back into our usual schtick.

Benji & Bahir

I'd never met these two up until the whole 15Malaysia thing got going. For some reason we always got paired for interviews n' stuff. These guys were responsible for the hillarious 'Meter' short film featuring politician KJ.

The weirdest thing is how we'd only really met each other during this whole 15Malaysia thing considering we both came out with our debut low budget features at the same time. Both 'Ciplak' and their feature debut 'Skali' came out at around the same time and there was even an article where both our films were featured side-by-side in KLue.

Namron

I'd met Namron before as an actor under the direction of Johan John for both 'Andai' and 'Cahaya'. Namron directed one of the more serious shorts of the 15Malaysia series, 'Lollipop', which dealt with paedophilia.

We both ended up being room-mates on the trip too.

Rizal

Rizal was the only non-director in our little gang. A writer from the Star and an excellent bassist, I first met him when he interviewed me for 'Ciplak' and we've been friends since, though I hadn't seen him for a long time up until this trip. Dude's hella cool and wrote a great article about the trip too which can be found here.

Together with the rest of the directors along for the ride as well as them good folk over at Ruumz, the trip was looking to be hella fun.

But nothing prepared me for the red carpet:

Words cannot describe how that felt. Seriously. The day we arrived we only had a few hours before we had to leave to the red carpet and when we arrived we thought we walked down the wrong entrance and missed the whole thing. But we didn't. That was just the red carpet for the entrance. The actual red carpet was inside and a lot longer than we thought it would be.

When we walked in I was somewhere in the middle of the line but somehow when we got to the stage area for press photos before walking onto the red carpet I ended up at the front of the pack. I remember thinking, "these people don't know who the hell we are. I'm just gonna walk humbly down this thing and enjoy the experience."

The second we walked forward onto the red carpet packs of Korean female fans were screaming their asses off.

I didn't believe it at first, thinking they must be screaming for the person before us or the person after us, but out of curiosity I raised one hand to wave... and the screams got louder. I raised my other hand to wave... and they got even louder. Finally, I raised both to see if I could coax an even bigger reaction and the crowd continued screaming and applauding even louder.

And I can honestly say I have never felt so Pimp in my entire life.

We later realized that whenever a female actress walked down the red carpet there was hardly any screaming. We then realized that the majority of the audience were young Korean girls. Perhaps they were just applauding our sweet tanned asses, God only knows, but it was an insane experience. For me, especially, it was insane because after winning the Anugerah Skrin for 'Ciplak' I never thought I'd experience a moment like that again, but walking down that red carpet topped that experience by a huge margin.

After the red carpet experience (which included Josh Hartnett walking down the red carpet and a very cute Korean girl pop group singing the theme song from 'Pearl Harbor') we went for Korean BBQ and the opening night party before calling it a night. It would later turn out that we'd be going to parties EVERY night.

The next day we had the screening of 15Malaysia at the fest as well as the 15Malaysia party.

The screening went well and the 15Malaysia party turned out to be both one of the best parties for the whole trip as well as the most emotional for a lot people as everyone paid tribute to the late, great Yasmin Ahmad by releasing hundreds of balloons of her favorite color (white) into the air. Though I'd never gotten the chance to meet her in person, I'd always admired her as a filmmaker and for a lot of the people there who had met her in person and known her, the whole scene was very touching and emotional for them.

Pusan itself is a cool place, even though there were severe communication breakdowns. Regardless, one of the cool things about the Pusan International Film Festival is the fact that the screenings are spread throughout all the cinemas in Pusan in various malls so, in effect, the entire town is a film festival.

And the food... oh, God, the food! A Korean BBQ meal that would set you back about twenty or thirty bucks a head only costs about eight bucks a head there.

One thing I especially liked was that new bonds were made between us filmmakers. It's interesting how the little cliques formed naturally. Myself and the fellow Pusan pimps I was hanging out with were pretty much on the same wavelength and conversations flowed like water, as did moments of insane silliness such as the video below:

All I was trying to do was use the moving walk-way handles as a crude dolly system to get a tracking shot of the gang as they walked so that I could cut together a 'Reservoir Dogs' style shot in the airport. Then Benji started dancing. I have no idea why. He just started dancing. So I asked him to do it again. And again and again. And he did every time. And right after that my mind started racing trying to figure out how to cut that footage together into a surreal video. Hillariously, he is being recognized more in public for the 'Wonderman' video than for his work as a director.

I don't know about the other filmmakers, but for our little clique it felt like we were rockstars, this being our first international film festival and all. So much so that leaving was a slightly sad affair:

The effects of the trip are still being felt to this day. Before the trip I had been very conflicted about this whole filmmaking thing, every day getting more and more jaded with every meeting with a film company or TV station or producer, making me wonder whether there was any point in doing the films and telling the stories that I wanted to tell since producers wanted the same derivative crap over and over again (and that's not an opinion. I was actually told that by a producer without a hint of shame in his voice).

Seeing how an audience overseas reacted to our films was one thing. To meet people from all over the world who knew and were interested in Malaysian filmmaking was nuts. At least for me, it helped me realize that there's no point pandering - there's an audience somewhere out there for anything you have in your mind to film.

On top of that, myself and the other filmmakers in our little clique have now been working together ever since that trip and the work flow's been steady and good. Though sometimes it feels a bit hectic and insane and sometimes I'd like to shoot the end clients in the head I'm always reminded of how insanely dull and boring it was during that three months prior to Pusan when I didn't have a single job at all. That whole trip wasn't just a holiday for me - it was a book mark in my life leading on to a whole new chapter and I'll never forget it.

Thank you, Pete, for this opportunity, and thank you Albert for all the insane multi-tasking leg work you had to undertake for all of us. Thank you P1 for the funding and thank you Ruumz for the sponsorship for the trip.

Most of all, thank you Pusan. You were brilliant.