Flea Love #2

My body was the furthest it’s ever been from a wonderland after wakeboarding on Saturday morning, but I was determined to make it to Flea Day that afternoon after my steals the previous time. My progress was slower this time due to my near-inability to return to a standing position after squatting to look at a stall’s wares, but it also meant I looked at stuff more carefully and spotted things I might otherwise have missed.

  1. CD: Curvatia (Spacek), $2

  2. Chunky red stone/bead bracelet, $2

  3. Red and yellow retro Volkswagon pin, $1
    Volkswagon Badge
  4. Turquoise tee with two robots dancing below the words “No Wave”, which pressed my music geek buttons so seductively that I couldn’t help but buy it even though it’s a little big, $4
  5. Black strappy purple stripey top with elasticized waist and buckles at the straps, am still deciding if it looks funkily retro or as if I have no taste, $4
  6. Emerald green sleeveless tee with old-school superlady comic graphic, $2
  7. Grey Ghostbuster tee! $6
Ghostbuster tee
I specialise in girls’ school toilets

CDs I passed up reluctantly because they were $6 each and I think that’s too high for a flea market where I have no guarantee they’ll even work and may never see the stallholder again:

  • Tri Repetae (Autechre)
  • Psychic Hearts (Thurston Moore)
  • The Whitey Album (Ciccone Youth)
  • Steady Diet Of Nothing (Fugazi)

“There are spots on this one,” I said, pointing to the back of the Tri Repetae disc. “Oh, I think that’s just mould,” the guy said. Fair enough, I understand it’s a flea market and stuff isn’t new, but I’d like to urge any flea market CD sellers reading this to please provide a CD player for testing! A Discman would do, after all. I’m a discerning customer who’s more likely than most to recognize the music you’ve got to offer, but I still won’t pay more than $4 if I can’t be sure I’m not just stocking up on coasters.

Haw Par Villa: Hallucinations, Hell And The Hokey Pokey

Spread the word – Haw Par Villa is the best trip you can have in Singapore without risking a criminal record.

[For non-Singaporean readers: Haw Par Villa is a statue park in the west of Singapore, built in the 1930s by two tycoon brothers who made their fortunes in Chinese medicinal ointment, and it’s full of garish life-size statues commissioned by the brothers to portray stories from Chinese mythology and traditional Chinese values.]

Haw Par Villa’s been terminally uncool ever since that spectacularly failed themeparkesque revamp in the late 80s, but no one seems to have noticed that they’ve since reversed many of the ill-advised changes that led to its downfall. It’s free to get in again these days (apart from the $5 parking charge and the $1 entry fee to Hell), and they’ve removed all those ridiculously kitsch additions like the rides and shows. So now, just the ridiculously kitsch original statues are left.

I took first Alec and recently Russ to it, and I think I wouldn’t be overstating things to say they both left a little changed by the experience. I don’t usually like to post too many photos in an entry, but my words really can’t do justice to the lurid reality of Haw Par Villa on their own, so forgive me if you’re on a slow connection and this entry takes a while to load. As usual, click on the photos for larger versions, and oh, be warned: CONTAINS WEIRD STATUE NUDITY.
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I Hope Brian May Was Wrong

Wakeboarding on Saturday morning – my back’s killing me.

Clubbing on Saturday night – my hips are killing me.

Cycling on Pulau Ubin on Sunday – my legs are killing me.

Karaoke screaming on Sunday night – my throat’s killing me.

Saw my best friend Russ off at the airport this morning, after a series of wonderful weekends with him, during which my boyfriend Alec and my entire family did their best to make our time together as lovely as it was because they knew how much this visit meant to Russ and me – my heart’s killing me.

Too much love for one person to bear, and I’ve never figured out what I did to deserve any of it.

The Dude Abides In Streatham

The Guardian reports from The Dude Abides, an annual festival for London fans of The Big Lebowski (held in Streatham Megabowl, Matt!):

“Alongside myriad versions of The Dude (lank hair, woolly cardigan, shorts) there was every interpretation of the film’s significant scenes you could think of: three men in red Lycra catsuits were wielding giant scissors, re-enacting a nightmare The Dude has about having his testicles chopped off by nihilists; the wheelchair-user Jeffrey Lebowski mentions having his legs blown away by “some Chinaman in Korea” – a Chinaman turned up clutching two severed legs.”

I salute the Chinaman. London needs more cool Chinamen.

Don’t Know About You But I Am Un Chien Andalusia

I enjoyed Daryl’s set at Hideout yesterday, but it exposed me to a danger that had never occurred to me before.

When he played Debaser, it was the first time I’d ever heard a Pixies song played out loud in public (in my head doesn’t count) and I suddenly realized that my usual private Pixies-listening routine of mad pogoing and fractured screaming should probably be suppressed. So I just bopped a little and hissed “un CHIEN Andalusia!” to Alec pretending it was a sweet nothing, and all the while Black Francis impressions were bubbling up in me like tics in a Tourette’s sufferer (yes, I’m reading Motherless Brooklyn at the moment, how’d you guess?), and I’m just really glad Daryl didn’t play Caribou because neither Alec nor I are able to sit through that one without swaying from side to side like drunk yogis and singing “cariBOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUU” and I think that might have been quite embarrassing.

2004 List: Six Songs

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I decided to write about some of the music I’d really enjoyed in 2004. I do realize it is now May 2005, which means that as far as a lot of the indie music press is concerned, The New “The” Band are now where it’s at, and The Old “The” Band are, like, so five minutes ago, and my shitty writing about 2004 music is totally off the radar.

But I care not! Behold as I fly in the face of convention – not, mind you, out of feisty sticking-it-to-The-Man rebellion, but sheer inability to follow it. My various song and album lists have been staring me in the face for months, but I’ve been continually prevented from actually writing about them by serious duties such as smacking the Pingu and other similarly weighty online tasks.

So here it is, my Six Songs I Really Liked In 2004 But Which Weren’t On Albums In My Albums List (Forthcoming, Seriously!) For Said Year And Which I Haven’t Already¹ Written About list!

  • Me Plus One (Annie):
    Everyone keeps going on and on about Chewing Gum, Heartbeat and The Greatest Hit, which are all wonderful, but I seem to be the only one who’s craziest over this one. This is the best song S Club 7 never made, slinky bass, spunky beats, Annie sing/speaking her way through verses like “Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs F F I, Mrs C, Mrs U L T. If ever there’s a girl who could rock your world, then that girl sure is me! (Right!)” and then we’re into the chorus, O joyous chorus, “feeling good, I’m top of the pops”, and for the video in my head we’re all tiny bubble-shaped dancers in a glass of Lucozade.

  • Get On Dis Motorcycle (Petey Pablo feat. Bubba Sparxxx):
    If you still say you’re jaded of Timbaland productions after listening to this one, I will kill you until you are dead. Never on God’s sweet earth has there been a more glorious union of manipulated kiddie-singing samples, frenetic bhangra pluckings, and classic crunk growl.

  • Greetings In Braille (The Elected):
    This song is a perfect little slice of alt-country lo-fi electronica with wistful nostalgic lyrics that sound great in the context of the song but look bad when quoted as email signatures. In other words, this song is emo as fuck, but don’t let that discourage you. It’s real purty.

  • Paint The Moon (The Czars):
    For the first two minutes or so this sounds like standard-issue Czars material – very pretty, but in a way that blends into the larger prettiness of the album rather than standing out as a song in its own right. Then we hit the bridge, the bass and guitars suddenly assert themselves, the harmonies get really lovely with “Let it go, let it go, let it fall down from the sky and leave this world behind”, and after this you don’t resent the subsequent return to verse-chorus-verse because when a song’s taken you that high you have to come down some time.

  • Parliament Square (Stina Nordenstam):
    I love midnight walks in parts of London that are crowded during the day, but deserted at night. This is a song for those walks, where less is not just more but everything, where even the silences contain multitudes and the timelessness of the great city envelops you. Against wintry piano, restrained guitars, and a saxophone like a lonely busker hoping against hope that his day isn’t over, Stina sings a photograph: “It may be silent, but I hear bombs fall. I hear sirens down in Whitehall. I see fires around you, Paul, but you stand so still and you look so small.”

  • Atmosphere (Technova):
    I don’t know when this was made, but I only heard it for the first time when Andrew Weatherall put it at the end of his Fabric mix, thereby making it the only dance mix that has ever made me want to cry. The beautiful synths in the Joy Division classic become the heart and soul of this remix, which I now wish I could have had as the secret soundtrack for the end of all my great clubbing nights in London. For me, it perfectly captures it all, the lights coming on in the club as you realize you finally have to leave, the tiredness beginning to set in as you wind down from your sensory overload, but also the quiet joy that keeps you walking to the tube station – and if it’s winter, and still dark after 6 a.m., those synths light your way like sparklers in slow-motion.

¹ Stuff I’ve mentioned before: Galang (MIA), Evil (Interpol), You Make Me Like Charity (The Knife), Baby Boom (The Crimea), and These Are Your Friends (Adem).

Pissing The Night Away

I’d been looking forward the whole of last week to my firm’s Pupils Bash on Friday, because lawyers are such great party people!

Gotcha.

The real reason was that free flow of drinks at Cocco Latte = FREE FLOW OF HOEGAARDEN ON TAP, YAAAAAAAY! to me. Sadly, upon arriving and bounding merrily to the bar, I was informed that the club’s arrangement with my firm didn’t include Hoegaarden as part of the free flow. Crushed, I therefore drowned my sorrows with 10 assorted shots of tequila and vodka, 2 beers, 1 vodka and lemonade, 1 JD & Coke, and finally a session in the obligatory firm Dentist’s Chair during which tequila was poured down my gullet. By the way, the only other two pupils I saw who weren’t afraid to drink and weren’t embarrassingly drunk by the end of the night were both guys, and all three of us studied in England. Go figure.

By the time Alec joined me at 11.30, many people had left, been brought home, or were stumbling around drunkenly outside, and no one seemed interested in staying to dance. Since I wasn’t in my comfy dancing shoes and was feeling a bit peckish, we left too and went to Newton for a sotong, stingray and Tsingtao supper with Jacob, Ian and Chiho.

A random mention of pool during supper got our hearts set on a pool game at 4 AM, and an Indian stall uncle (or it might have been the bengs at the next table, I forget) said to try Selegie Road, so off we went, to a roadside bar which looked as if it had been expecting 100 rally-car enthusiasts to show up but which was starkly empty. “In the absence of booze, I’ve ordered us 3 cheesecakes,” Jacob said, and they were good. I think we played 3 games, during which Alec beat Jacob, Jacob beat Alec, and I fell asleep halfway during my game so I don’t know who won but I certainly lost.

KNÖBGÅÅGS

Far funnier jokes about IKEA product names have been made by people far funnier than me, but what the hell. Surfing the IKEA website in search of a frame which would fit the fantastic poster Russ brought me from London, I was very impressed by the following products:

  • KOLON floor protector “protects flooring and flat-woven rugs against wear and dirt.” Cost: $69.
  • KONJUGAT curtain rod is made of powder-coated steel, “can be extended with enclosed connector”, and “cut to desired length with a hacksaw.”
  • Finally, VÄGIS key cabinet. Consists of 3 compartments for mobile phone, small items, “etc”.

I didn’t find what I was looking for though, boo. Does anyone know where in Singapore I can find an affordably priced frame big enough for a 85 cm by 120 cm poster?

Skycatcher

One more photo from the weekend. This was taken at Gilman Village, but the building itself is on Alexandra Road. I was just experimenting with some tips Russ gave me last weekend on using the spot meter, and am quite happy with the results here.

Skycatcher

Things Fall Apart

I realized on the bus home yesterday that, completely unintentionally, I was reading a book set in a leper colony and listening to Disintegration.

And because I clicked “Preview” and this post looked a little short the way it was, I shall end with a terribly tasteless joke. You know what prostitutes like about lepers, don’t you? Yeah, they always leave a tip.