Archive for January, 2009
A couple of reasons to smile
Friday morning was spent with a soju-induced hamover, but the afternoon is off to a much better start.
The Colbert Report has been pretty lame so far in 2009, relying on a lot of filler and crappy guest spots — perhaps because there’s no more Bush to provide satire gold. But Colbert’s first instalment of the ‘Better Know a Beatle’ series is end-to-end genius. In this interview, Paul McCartney looks genuinely miffed by Colbert’s apparently ignorant questions, with hilarious effect (sorry, I can’t figure out how to embed video from Comedy Central in WordPress).
So that was great, and then, in the comments section on that Videogum post was something that cracked me up just as much. I’m not sure why.
Here it is:
Such commitment to typographical correction is admirable.
Also, great new Arcade Fire song!
DJ Ham rips mad shit up
DJ Ham sends the crowd to the brink of hysteria.
I had already planned to head along to an indie music night my mate organises at V13, but yesterday afternooon he sent me a message asking if I would be one of the DJs, because someone had pulled out. I said I would, but I only had an ipod. And so, later that evening, I found myself behind the bar ‘spinning’ tunes straight from the iPod as DJ Ham.
It was great fun, even though there were three-second intervals between each song, and despite the fact that the clicking sound of the iPod running through my the playlist as I chose what to play next was clearly audible through the speakers. Naturally, the crowd — which was comprised mostly of friends I had dragged along to see me in action — worshipped me (as you can see in the photos).
Here’s what I played (as much as memory allows):
Dominique Leone — Nous Tombons Dans Elle
Dizzee Rascal — Fix Up, Look Sharp
Black Mountain — Don’t Run Our Hearts Around
Bodies of Water — Under the Pines (an incredible music video)
Boys Noize (forgotten which track)
I may have played more, but the beers were flowing… my memory is slightly impaired. Next time, I’ll bring an adapter chord so I can at least play through iTunes.
Two adoring fans demonstrate their love for DJ Ham (or, as they called me, DJ Clickwheel)
New hope
Just for the record, I’m 27 years old, I live in Hong Kong, and I watched it all on the BBC.
Byrne-ing down the house
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing David Byrne perform what was essentially a lively art and dance spectacle with some great music. I won’t go into detail about the show, because I’ve already done that here for Time Out.
Kudos, too, to the knowledgeable Spike, who did a very good write-up of the night (and beat me to it by quite some time).
I did manage to take a shitty cellphone video of what for me was the night’s highlight: a cracking, tutu-clad rendition of Burning Down the House at the end of the second encore. Here it is, replete with tinny HTC sound (seriously, the sound at the show — while not ideal because of the crappy acoustics — was much better than my cellphone would have you believe).
Byrne’s concert came the night after a show I haven’t yet had time to write about: Mogwai, at HITEC’s auditorium. They were brilliant. They might look like five average dudes, but the Glaswegians are superstars when it comes to creating post-rock soundscapes. Their lightness of touch and dynamic interplay between the instruments was formidable.
I was also really happy with the Mogwai crowd: the show was a sell-out, with 700 people, who were noisy in their appreciation. Not bad for Hong Kong on a Sunday night.
Music in my earholes
Today has proven an unusually leisurely one in the office, which has given me a chance to catch up on this shit I’m supposed to be covering: music.
First off, I’m mighty pained that I couldn’t extend my recent New Zealand holiday for 10 days so I could catch the Big Day Out. Instead, my brother and several of my friends are there soaking up the action, which, according to this blog, sounds pretty damn great. My Morning Jacket, TV on the Radio, Hot Chip, and Neil Young. It’s difficult to recall a better line-up than that, and those first three are at the top of my list of bands I wanna see, like, right away.
From the world of recorded music, however, I am finding much solace. For starters, there’s a super duper new album from Animal Collective, which you can stream in its entirety here.
M Ward has a proper stunner of an indie-pop and alt-country album, Hold Time, that’s streaming at NPR. (Favourite moment: Ward’s cover of ‘Rave On’.)
Antony and the Johnsons have put out Crying Light, and Time Out London has given it five stars. Time Out New York found it less agreeable, granting it only three sparklies. Meanwhile, New York magazine has a ripping good profile of Antony Hegarty, in which the singer goes to town on Sean Penn and Milk.
Sweet new track from the Handsome Furs.
And finally, a cool new video from Beirut. Likey likey.
I could catch a monkey.
Ich bin ein Bucharester
The growth of my journalistic empire continues. Last year, my words were translated into Italian, and now, I’m busting up Bucharest with my bad-ass broadcasting.
So now you can read me in Romanian, just like you always wanted.
Did you know:
- Bucharest was first mentioned in documents as early as 1459
- Bucharest is the 6th largest city in the European Union by population within city limits
- A native or resident of Bucharest is called Bucharester
- Bucharest’s crime rate is rather low in comparison to other East-European capital cities
- Bucharest was the host city of the fourth edition of the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2006
Another dead journalist
Journalists, they say, are at the bottom of the pile when it comes to the respect and trust of the public. We’re right there languishing alongside politicians and lawyers.
I often feel that I should defend the role of the journalist as truth-exposer, but then wonder what is the point. I think people secretly value journalists more than they let on, and that we’re just an easy target: visible and within easy finger-pointing range when shit goes down; invisible and (oftentimes) humble when bringing to the world the information that matters (settle down — I’m not including myself in this category; I just write about entertainment).
One man who fits into the latter category — and who you wouldn’t have heard of before a few days ago — was Sri Lanka’s Lasantha Wicrematunge, who in his career turned down opportunities to become a lawyer and parliamentarian in favour of a low-paying, unsung job as a journalist exposing the truth about that country’s sorry state of ethnic conflict.
Wicrematunge worked in the shadow of threats to his life, from a government that couldn’t abide his work; a profession he described as a call of conscience.
Eventually, they got him. Shot in the head on his way to the office, Wicrematunge finally met an end he had long expected. He leaves behind a wife and two children .
In anticipation of the awful event, Wicrematunge wrote a searching editorial for his paper, The Sunday Leader. In it, he proves the strength of words and the importance of speaking truth to power, predicting his own death and explaining why he wouldn’t give up his noble pursuit, despite the warnings.
Forget the CNN reporters with perfect teeth and improbable hair. This man, working for a paper I had never heard of in a land so frequently ignored, for a cause so repressed and covered up, is my model of best in class.
Wicremantunge concludes his prehumous address with words that ought to be given maximum air time in every journalism school of the world:
Let there be no doubt that whatever sacrifices we journalists make, they are not made for our own glory or enrichment: they are made for you. Whether you deserve their sacrifice is another matter. As for me, God knows I tried.
Something more cheerful
Today has been crappy, but it has had a spot of brightness. On my desk today I found a small Christmas card that had been left for me by a colleague who often gets a rough ride in the office. The card had been left there before Christmas, but it had been hidden under a pile of books and mags.
On the front of this small card are printed the words: “Thank You — Our life is full of sunshine and joy. Let us jump happily hand in hand for my own the whole world”. I’m sure the card wasn’t chosen specifically for me — it was probably just first off the pile — but I had to smile at those words… they almost made sense.
Inside the card, was a simple written request of humblingly modest proportions:
“By the way, could you give me a wooden bookmark from New Zealand? I bought a bookmark when I visited New Zealand in 03-04. I don’t know where it is. I put it somewhere at home but I forget where I place that bookmark. I request a wooden bookmark as a gift.”
If only I had known in time. Maybe Mong Kok has one…
Smoggy mood
A few weeks ago I wrote a draft of a column for the Time Out Hong Kong that I later shelved. It wasn’t saying anything new or helpful, I decided. But I’m in a shitty mood with the city today, so I guess it’s as good a time as any to share this column-that-wasn’t with y’all.
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My brother Andrew is in town, passing through on his way back to New Zealand with his girlfriend, and I’m showing them round Hong Kong. We’re on board a lusty vessel bound for Lamma, admiring the intimidating beauty of that bit just by Aberdeen, and pointing to nearby proud icons nearby: Stanley Peninsula! Cute sampan! Coal power station! But as I’m gesticulating with excitement as these monuments of grandeur, I realise they’re barely visible. It’s a cloudless and warm winter’s day in Hong Kong, but I can’t see five metres in front of my face.
A grey menace clings to every surface and hangs heavy in the air over the city, its islands, and that bit just by Aberdeen. If levels of smog could be measured in terms of body fat percentage, I’d have to say that, on this day, small-boned, angular Hong Kong would rank in the high 90s. If it had to be characterised in terms of clothing, the smog on this day would be one of those XXXL bomber jackets as if it were worn by an ailing Tai Tai with scoliosis in Kowloon Tong. All this to say that, really, it is thicker and greyer than your grandmother’s undergrowth.
(Apologies, grandma.)
“That’s shocking,” says Andrew, with a sense of awe that even surpasses his reaction to the splendour of IFC2 (“It looks like a big penis”). “You can stare directly at the sun without hurting your eyes.” On a day when we should be captivated by the world’s best skyline, enthralled by the mountainous developments of Stanley and the futurismo of Cyberport, all we can talk about — or, for that matter, see — is the thick elixir of respiratory illness.
Seriously, Hong Kong: WTF? Why do we just accept that it’s okay to take in a long slake of toxic cocktail with every breath? Why is it cool to send our young children out to fill their fragile lungs with that corrosive, carcinogenic cumulus? We might as well say, ‘Here Tommy, take this packet of cigarettes and make sure you smoke the lot of them by the end of pre-school today. And then you can come home and breathe the nice fresh air we made come out of a machine!”
In the Pearl River Delta, there are between 60,000 and 70,000 Hong Kong-owned factories. Let’s be generous and take the lower figure. Factories aren’t typically small objects, and they tend to get leaky, gushing out those great plummages of pollution that help keep Hong Kong grey-okay. Think of one filthy behemoth and the bile it pumps into our breathing supply. Then multiply that by fifty. Add in a network of roads and infrastructure that facilitates the rapid burning of fossil fuels. Then multiple that by a thousand. I can’t even envisage it: what would a line of 60,000 factories look like? (Well, aside from North England.) It must stretch from here to The Faroes.
How often do the tycoons who own those factories stop and think about how the foul syrup from their factories is affecting their daughters? And why are they allowed to get away with it? These Hongkongers might as well be lobbing bundles of Sars back over the border. Think that’s an extreme analogy? Take that very acronym: Severe Acute Respitory Syndrome. I can’t think of a better way to describe walking down Nathan Road at nine in the morning.
So much of Hong Kong culture revolves around the idea of face. Well, on this day, there’s not much of a face to lose. I’m ashamed to show my brother the murky, man-created mess that obscures what would otherwise be a pictaresque setting. “It’s a bad smog day,” I offer feebly, cognisant of the fact that yesterday was just the same, and that the lackidasical Hong Kong government and the businesses that have so profited from our cancerous sky have done little to make it better. It seems that we’re going to be eating shit-sandwiches from Shenzhen for a while yet.
As I look through the haze at the ghostly outline of Hong Kong’s sum attempt at alternative energy, past the three upright chopsticks that are the signature of the coal plant, at an elegant windmill sitting lonely on a Lamma hill, I realise that this is more than a bad hair day for Hong Kong. This is a case of chronic acne. There is dirty pus in this city’s very pores. So isn’t it about time we changed our diet?
I’d feel sorry for Ringo is it ISN’T a real series.
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