Jibba-Jabba

Mr T Vs Everything is a repository of links to fictional fights between Mr T and, you guessed it, anything and everything. The complete shittiness of the Photoshopping involved in finding and altering pictures to storyboard the fight is part of the charm, as is the repetitive use of key elements such as youth centres, his helluva fast van, milk, and how far he can throw someone. There are too many fights to browse through, and most are really mediocre, but I think Mr T Vs Hitler, Mr T Vs Shakespeare, and intriguingly, Mr T Vs His Own Abstract Thoughts were a little above the morass.

Evil Twins

Back home after lindy-hopping, we were watching the tape of Singapore Idol which my father recorded for me. Douglas Oliveiro was giving his comments on someone.

My mum: That’s Douglas O, he’s a local rock singer.
Alec: He looks like Colonel Gaddafi.

After a short WTF??!! silence from the rest of us, we realized how right he actually was.

(Off to Sibu tomorrow. Back on Sunday. So happy.)

And If I Stared Too Long, I’d Probably Break Down And Cry-yi

If you thought my last post was contrarian, get a load of this one: via Daryl, I discovered that Axl Rose has had awful plastic surgery, and I am DEVASTATED.

There is a little less hotness in my world now. I need to see if I can find the videos for November Rain and Patience on bittorrent, just to relive old times.

On a related note, one of my recent guilty pleasure blog reads is Fugging It Up, which is like the “Don’ts” photopage in girly magazines, except with much more miaow.

When Exams Attack

Studying will really really begin tomorrow. For real. Really.

Unfortunately, going by previously established patterns, dear Reader, this probably means you’re in for a rather slow 3 weeks. No more of my rapier wit and irresistable personality! No more visceral vignettes of my swinging rock and roll life! Indeed, my friends, you will have to get by with my usual exam output of unrestrained music geekery, pointless links collected during hours on end of study avoidance surfing, and most certainly nothing even remotely intellectual.

So, pretty much the same as what you’ve always got here, just with even less of a life than before. Sigh. Here’s a little taster:

Music Geekery
Newly arrived from Django, yay!

  • Bubba Sparxxx: Deliverance
  • Dirty Three: Whatever You Love You Are
  • Aereogramme: A Story In White
  • Lewis Parker: Masquerades And Silhouettes
  • Bedhead: What Fun Life Was
  • The Walkmen: Everyone Who Pretended To Like Me Is Gone

Pointless Links
In honour of For Alec, who had his first actual bout in a boxing ring a few days ago and wisely decided not to tell me about it until after the fact: Mike Tyson Quotes.

Here’s one I’d like to highlight for you, you big dolt no one in particular, because of course I’m totally cool about the fact that my favourite nose in the world could quite possibly have been broken before I got the chance to see it again – “I try to catch him right on the tip of the nose, because I try to push the bone into the brain.”

Nothing Remotely Intellectual
I certainly never kept my Will Young mania a secret on this site during the original Pop Idol, and I see no reason to be shy about my commitment to its American franchise. This Ryan Seacrest fellow is a poor substitute for Ant and Dec, and I like Pete Waterman so much more than the painfully inarticulate Randy Jackson, but at least sexy Simon is still around, and getting sexier by the episode. Oh, and GO FANTASIA!

Albert Finney Leads To Just Shoot Me Leads To Totally Unprovoked Rant

I went Googling for the cast of the painfully unfunny comedy series Just Shoot Me, because while watching (and absolutely loving) Big Fish a few weeks ago I was convinced that Albert Finney also played the boss in Just Shoot Me. Thankfully, I was wrong, but the results of the search were disturbing in other ways. For instance, there are actually people in this world that liked Just Shoot Me enough to make fan sites for it, and nominate it for Emmy awards.

I mean, I’m really not a comedy fascist. I never liked Seinfeld, but understood how other people could find it funny. I’m not into the diarrhoea gag that is apparently a mandatory feature of all screwball romantic comedies these days, but with some effort I can also understand why people start falling out of their chairs the minute the bubbly explosive noises start. What I do like is wisecracking and sarcasm, which Just Shoot Me attempted to specialize in but only ended up ass-raping.

Which is precisely why Just Shoot Me deserves to be peppered with rusty nails and left to die of tetanus, and why the Internet is truly a place for freaks to find each other.

Hello, freaks! :)

Blasphemy

Earlier tonight, while watching Justin Timberlake: Down Home In Memphis on Starworld:

My mum: So who’s this?
Me: blah blah blah blah soooooo cute blah blah blah blah sooooo catchy blah blah blah blah fantastic dancer, look mum!
My mum: He looks like Gurmit Singh.

I have not the words.

[For non-Singaporeans: Gurmit Singh is a local TV personality, best known for an admittedly masterly comedy role as a dodgy building contractor sporting a mini-Afro perm, yellow rubber boots, and a large mole, best forgotten for an attempt at a talk show where he was probably trying to be Conan O’Brien but didn’t quite realize that only Conan O’Brien can be Conan O’Brien, and everyone else trying to be Conan O’Brien really just ends up as cringeworthy as Brooke Shields in Suddenly Susan. Suffice to say, he SO DOES NOT EVEN FAINTLY RESEMBLE JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE, OR VICE VERSA.]

How Will I Live?

From The Onion: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn’t Own A Television.

“Green has lived without television since 1989, when his then-girlfriend moved out and took her set with her. ‘When Claudia went, the TV went with her,’ Green said. ‘But instead of just going out and buying another one — which I certainly could have afforded, that wasn’t the issue — I decided to stand up to the glass teat.’

‘I’m not an elitist,’ Green said. ‘It’s just that I’d much rather sculpt or write in my journal or read Proust than sit there passively staring at some phosphorescent screen.’ “

I’m not normally a big TV watcher, but at exam time I undergo a bizarre metamorphosis. Nothing is too banal, nothing too dull, it’s all good as long as it continues to provide an excuse to sit slack-jawed on the couch instead of gritting my teeth at my desk over comparative financing mechanisms of international trade transactions.

Which is why, over my back-to-back exam periods of the past few months, I developed certain, shall we call them, attachments, which cruel reality now threatens to deprive me of.

The Bachelor 3 had me screaming abuse at bitchcat Kirsten, with her shiftygoogly eyes and infuriating tendency to speak only from the back of her throat, Survivor had me screaming abuse at Jon the vicious conniving shrimp with bad hair, and Am I Hot? had me screaming abuse at the judges every time they dismissed someone who floated my boat. I writhed on the couch cursing David E. Kelley to hell and back in a particular episode of Ally McBeal where he made it look as if Ally might dump sweet sexy plumber Jon Bon Jovi for Fred Durst’s evil twin (played by fat-faced Matthew Perry). Let’s not even go into my hours of MTV hoping for just one glimpse of Justin Timberlake.

But as I stagger out of exam haze and re-enter the world of the living, a small part of me feels an acute sense of loss. The Bachelor is over. Ally’s broken up with her plumber. Survivor continues, but self-respect demands that I actually leave the house on Friday nights. Similarly, the Am I Hot? finals are tonight (black guy who’s an English teacher! black guy who’s an English teacher!), but I’ll miss them because I’m having dinner with Pei Ee. Tomorrow I’m taking mum to see Love, Actually (Colin Firth! Colin Firth!), which means I have to miss Punk’d.

I’m not proud of this promenade of plebeianism, but Armchair Psychology 101 suggests that the first step towards regaining my intellectual cred is to come clean and document my fall. Meanwhile, ongoing attempts to wean myself off the glass teat include If on a winter’s night a traveller and The Brothers Karamazov (still not quite Proust, but they’ll do for now), half-written poems stuffed in drawers (don’t even bother with the obvious jokes, y’all) and, quite importantly, admitting to some of my friends for the first time in a while that I actually exist.

MC Misogyny

Continuing the shameless dearth of intellectual content on this website ever since I started studying for exams, I just wanted to say I love summer hip-hop videos. Lots of bared skin, abundant booty, dance routines that make the most of all of the above, and, of course, that indispensable ingredient of summer hip-hop (some would say all hip-hop, but that just means they don’t actually listen to enough of it): misogynism.

I want to make a mixtape and call it Misogynists’ Party. It will feature classic tracks such as Baby Got Back, Rumpshaker, Hot In Herre and that new masterpiece by Nelly, P.Diddy and Murphy Lee, Shake Your Tailfeather.

Traitor

The July issue of Glamour is out, and as I peruse its glossy pages (courtesy of Tamara, household supplier) I grapple again with the fact that I am a traitor to my sex.

I’m not meek or submissive. I don’t buy the whole “surrendered wife” thing, neither do I believe in The Rules. I certainly believe a woman can have a successful career and be a great wife and mother at the same time, and should be allowed to do so. No, my friends, my betrayal goes beyond such peripheral issues to strike at the very core of womanhood: I prefer sensible, comfortable shoes to silly pretty ones.

I run screaming from any shoe heel that isn’t at least as wide as, well, my heel. No hobbling around on mildly obese pins for me. I like walking the streets knowing I could charge after a snatch thief or sprint for the bus if I had to. I insist on clubbing in shoes I can actually dance in rather than twitch awkwardly from side to side. I acknowledge that stiletto heels look elegant and feminine, but do not think I would look particularly elegant or feminine while shuffling along screaming in pain from my blistered feet and falling down frequently. Of course, there is the argument that many women the world over manage to spend the day striding around in 6 inch heels, which may also include breaking into the Kremlin and acrobatic sex depending on whether or not they’re in a Bond movie, but I just wasn’t born with that gene, okay?

While we’re on the topic of shoes and betraying my sex, I’m not even sure if I’m normal as regards numbers. According to Glamour I am meant to have cupboards overflowing with them. I have a small shoe rack from Argos with space left over on its top tier for two (sickly) houseplants. Here is the extent of my consternation – under a rarely-felt impulse to make too much information available to the world, I hereby list the contents of my shoe rack and ask fellow females (male views welcome too, unless you’re Alec who already makes his views on my shoes all too clear) out there to comment on my normality.

  • Dark grey slip-on trainers (Acupuncture), bought for £50 in my first year in college and worn pretty much every day since then. My shoe of choice for clubbing and holidays where I spend hours walking.
  • Black lace-up trainers (Nike) for my rare attempts at land-based exercise.
  • Red lace-up casual shoes (Mango) which I love because they’re red.
  • Light grey slip-ons (some cheapie brand, I think they cost $20) with lines in orange. Rip-offs of those types of trainer that hug the shape of the foot extremely closely.
  • Khaki casual rubber-soled slip-ons with two stripes, one navy blue and one burgundy (Shelly’s). They look better than this description makes them sound, I promise. Current favourites given that I am going through a brown phase.
  • Chocolate brown strappy open-toed shoes with slightly chunky 2.5 inch heels.
  • White strappy open-toed shoes with 2.5 inch heels.
  • White slouchy sandals with subtle leaf detail and a sort of toe strap (I really need to read more girly mags to bone up on the lingo)
  • Black courts with ankle strap, heels about 2.5 inches.
  • Black strappy evening shoes, 2.5 inch heels
  • Silver strappy evening shoes, 3 inch heels
  • Dark purple punk whore boots, a Christmas present from Alec a month and a half after we started going out.

Despite the fact that I think this is a veritable shitload of shoes, apparently I am meant to own more, and they’re meant to be sillier. It’s so hard being a girl.

Honesty For Dumbasses: A Glamour Magazine Quiz

Page 42, the June issue of Glamour. Question 3 of a quiz described as “You Golden-Tongued Devil! (How to make anybody do anything by talking straight)”: At a dinner party, a Ralph Fiennes type asks what you think of the USA’s policy in Israel. You’re worried about showing your ignorance, so you:

A: Waffle with conviction
B: Say you can see both the Israeli and Palestinian point of view (even though you know neither)
C: Say, “I really don’t know for sure what the USA’s policy is”

The correct answer is apparently C. “In reality, what we don’t know completely outweighs what we do know about the world. People will respect your honesty.”

It didn’t perhaps occur to the writer of this quiz that some Glamour readers may actually have an informed view on US policy in Israel? I agree unreservedly that what I don’t know about the world completely outweighs what I do, but this is hardly an obscure issue. Anyone who reads the newspapers and has a modicum of intelligence should be able to put a view forward that doesn’t involve ignorance.

Mind you, if he really was a Ralph Fiennes type, I expect I’d be too entranced by his piercing blue eyes and noble, brooding brow to even register what he was saying to me at all, so I’m not sure what I’ve just been trying to prove.