Can’t Take Him Anywhere Part II: Catholic Edition

I thought it would be good to share this story, which took place the day after the last one, just to make clear that Alec is an equal opportunity offender.

On Sunday, I slept in and stayed at home, and Alec was out and about. I was still pretty sleepy when he left the house, but we agreed we’d meet at our church in the evening to attend Mass.

The following interchange of text messages took place during that afternoon:

This is the T-shirt:

And this is the best gif I can find depicting a “double facepalm” to represent my weekend:

Double facepalm

Can’t Take Him Anywhere

We went to see Platform65’s Rites & Regulations, a well-conceptualized and creatively staged doublebill of funeral-themed plays aWake (by Lin Mingyu) and Mok Cui Yin’s adaptation of Kuo Pao Kun’s The Coffin Is Too Big For The Hole. The production was at 5 Foot Way Inn on Aliwal Street, and once it was over we decided to go to good ol’ Zam Zam for our murtabak fix.

Discussing the plays as we walked to Zam Zam along North Bridge Road, I admitted that my reaction to a particular situation which arose in aWake was not very compassionate. “The void deck was booked months ago for the Malay wedding!” I ranted. “If this Chinese family just went and started setting up for a funeral without even checking whether the space was available, then too bad for them!”

Alec then observed that, regardless of how crystal clear it may seem to people detached from the situation, he thought the reasons for the Chinese family’s refusal to yield up the space had been quite realistically portrayed as arising from a mixture of grief, fear and superstition.

As one might often do in a conversation as a way of expressing one’s point, Alec chose at this point to speak from the perspective of the Chinese family i.e. speaking in the first person as if he were part of the Chinese family.

Which is how, in the midst of channelling a distressed old Chinese lady who doesn’t want to move the funeral site because her mother’s ghost will get lost, Alec exclaimed “I don’t care about the Malay family!” Right next to an elderly Malay gentleman in traditional baju. Just outside the Sultan Mosque.

Goodness Bodacious Me

Good: A husband who comes to find you where you’re running errands so that he can have dinner with you before he goes out with his boys.

Bad: A husband who says this as you’re sitting down to dinner –

Alec: Your jeans are nice. I was checking out your ass from the back before I realized it was you.

Me: ……

Alec: That sounded way better in my head than when it came out from my mouth.

Yes, I realize my life is a Goodness Gracious Me skit. I would have responded with the customary "Check please!", except that we were in McDonalds.

Sowing His Wild Kedongdongs

Kedongdong fruits from Grandma's tree

Backstory: We visited my grandmother a week or two ago. She has lived in the same house since World War II, a bungalow surrounded by lush garden which my green-thumbed uncle spends most of his time looking after, when he isn’t fishing. There was a pile of fruits on the table from their kedongdong tree. My grandmother urged Alec to try one. He loved it within one bite, later spent a good deal of time out in the garden with my uncle looking at the tree, and my grandmother happily pressed him to take a couple more fruits home.

This isn’t exactly a laugh-out-loud Alecdote, but I’m sharing it just so people understand what I have to go through. Some women get laugh lines when they get old. The wrinkles on my face will be somewhat more complex.

Me, looking at pile of kedongdongs on kitchen counter: Why haven’t you eaten these up yet?

Alec: I’m going to plant them!

Me: You what??! Where, in our balcony? They’ll take like five years to bear fruit!

Alec: You people always say I should plant stakes in this country, right?

Me: ……

Alec: Are they really called kedonkadonks?

Alec’s Gig Commentaries

Aside from the music I attend gigs for, part of the fun of attending gigs is dragging Alec to them and either enjoying his whiny comments or marvelling at the ability he has developed to fall asleep, often standing up, in decidedly harsh sonic environments. I should have kept a record of these over the years, in hindsight, but tonight’s Blonde Redhead gig is as good a place as any to start, and I do remember some bits from the past. It helps if you’re familiar with the bands in question.

Alec Gig Commentary #1, shortly after the start of the Blonde Redhead gig. It is possible that Alec is not enjoying Kazu’s rather unique style of singing.

Alec, plaintively: Will anyone else sing apart from her?
Me: Yeah, the guy sings too, didn’t you hear him sing a bit in the first song?
Alec: You call that singing???

Alec Gig Commentary #2, during Beach House’s set at the Laneway Festival: After several years of shit like this, punk was born.

Alec Gig Commentary #3, after standing in mud and torrential rain for several hours at the Laneway Festival: Why didn’t I just marry a girl who was into spa weekends?

Alec Gig Commentary #4, standing on the Home Club dancefloor surrounded by people going wild for Tokimonsta’s set: Zzzzzz…

Alec Gig Commentary #5, standing in the front row during Einsturzende Neubauten’s set at All Tomorrow’s Parties 2007: I’m awake, I’m awake…zzzzzzz…

Alec Gig Commentary #6, after Battles: Best nap ever.

Sneakyguy

Since Alec has abandoughned failed to update his blog for over a year now, I thought I’d share an alecdote to reassure any of his former readers that he is still very much committed to breadmaking. People who give a shit about baking may already be aware that making sourdough bread requires the cultivation of a disgusting bacterial soup called a “starter” which is fed flour and water on a weekly basis in order to keep its lethal toxins at an optimal level. (My theory has always been that Industrial Light and Magic only had to increase the starter feeding frequency to once a day in order to create the Jabba the Hutt special effects back in ‘77.)

Having experienced some hilariously epic fails in his previous sourdough starter attempts (I’ll let him tell you the tales himself, if he ever bloody gets round to it), back in January he managed to concoct something which appeared to be a success. He never actually ended up making bread out of this starter, mind you, but you should understand that insofar as this batch didn’t explode in his face, coating our kitchen with more yeasty residue than Tila Tequila’s *cough*, it was well-described as a “success”.

So anyway, Alec had this happily non-explosive starter, but was faced with the problem of several weeks’ worth of business travel, which would make the personal care and feeding of his fetid germfields somewhat difficult. Which led to this conversation:

Alec: If you had a pet, say a cat, and you decided to go on a holiday, someone would need to feed your cat, right?

Me, unsuspectingly: Of course.

Alec: And you know that even though I hate cats, just because I love you I’d help you feed your pet while you were away, right?

Me, suspiciously: Yeeees.

Alec: Well, if you think of me as having several million tiny little pets…

Heads-Up For Vince McMahon

Alec: I heard Joe the Plumber might be becoming a Democrat.
Me, scoffing: Well Joe the Fucking Plumber is basically trying to milk everything he can out of his fifteen seconds of fame, isn’t he? This time next year I bet he’ll be making his WWF debut.
Alec: That would be great. His special move can be the Small Business Slam.

Simile

I lost the draft post for this in the server meltdown so the topic of discussion is obviously yesterday’s “news” by now, but I remembered the incident while listening to the radio today and decided to resurrect this conversational fragment anyway. I’m always amused by the strange things that move Alec to angry pithiness.

Me, reading the news: Henceforth, Beyonce’s new stage name shall be Sasha Fierce.
Alec: WHAT.
Me: It is designed to emphasise a fiercer musical direction.
Alec, looking genuinely aggrieved: She’s about as fierce as a Care Bear’s nipple!

Wii Are Not Amused

Good: Having a husband who brings home a Wii from his business trip to Hong Kong.

Bad: Having a husband who, when setting up the Wii while you’re out, decides that this is the best way to depict his wife.

Wii are not amused

Pimping My Ride

A while back on this blog, a small but vocal band of dedicated commenters mounted a Make Alec Blog campaign, no doubt hoping that an Alec blog would provide more of the bizarre nuggets of Alecness they had come to enjoy here from time to time.

I’m not sure if the original Make Alec Blog campaigners still read this blog, but anyway, I thought it was worth announcing a partial victory for the cause! Some may be dismayed to learn that he has chosen to focus the blog on chronicling his bread-baking exploits rather than his miscellaneous daily humiliations, but don’t fret, some of his entries so far suggest that the two are surprisingly similar.

Before you all head off to Alec’s blog turf, never to set foot here again, I wish to state the following for the record:

  1. Everything he writes about me is a DAMN LIE! I am an infinitely supportive and understanding spouse, not in the least bit given toward irrational unnecessarily hostile pronouncements that his fucking dough fucking fermenting in our fucking fridge is going to come to life in the night and murder us in our bed.

  2. The lame blog name is not my fault. I made many excellent suggestions, which all got shot down. For example:
    • Flour Fairy
    • Master Baker
    • Yeast Infection

Anyway, do pop over to read and/or participate as you see fit. I mostly support this development in our life, but if he starts getting more hits than me, I might have to refocus this blog too. On pr0n.