the elusive cool

I cannot resist my judgment of these three bands even though I have never heard their music.

Rubberband survives despite their stupid name because Hong Kong people have a high tolerance for bad taste. They will never recover their cool (not that they had much in the first place) after they have: 1) been interviewed in an afternoon program on TVB, 2) been featured in mainstream fashion mags sold at 7-Eleven, 3) posed for Giordano.

As for Sugar Club, at first I thought they had cool potentials, but after seeing a live gig by Katncandix in Taipei, this pretentious sugary brother-sister Sugar Club business is smelling more and more like a knock-off. Their bubble-lettered t-shirts and the girl’s cutie poses are really getting annoying.

As for Endy Chow, I can’t help but think this dude had the name Andy but decided to change the first letter of his name thinking it sounds the same anyway. He fashions the same tiresome I-work-in-a-hair-salon kind of look.

The more I see these guys in mainstream media, the less cool they become. I can’t help it, but two words form my conclusion: Same shit.

The mainstream media is now aware of a small population who are getting tired of the Easons and Joeys, so they put together this pretentious “bandshow” aimed to deliver “bandsound” for those seeking something a little more authentic. Don’t be fooled. It is only in HK that the media need to emphasize “band” to distinguish from the non-band. It’s like the more a guy points to himself and say “Look at me, I’m cool,” the more he is not.

Side note: I didn’t know Zen was still around.

remembrance

Amongst those who died in the plane crash that took the lives of the entire Locomotiv hockey team on September 7th 2011, I want to pay respect to a few names whom I remember from my years of watching the sport and following my favourite teams.



I remember Igor Korolev, #22 on the Leafs, who played for us as a third-line centre, a grinder in key moments of the game. He was a terrific skater with solid defensive abilities that locked him a lot of ice time. I remember his curly hair that snuck out beneath his helmet, and his lips were always swollen or cut from the many on-ice battles. Igor was buried in Mt Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto.



I remember Alexander Karpotsev, #52 on the Leafs, who led our team one year in blocked shots when he played alongside Dmitry Yushkevich to form the top defensive pair on those Leaf teams from some ten-plus years ago, around the time, one year, when we battled the Islanders in the first round of the play-offs.



I remember Ruslan Salei, the speedy winger who was the only NHL player on the Belarus national team in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, a team that faced Canada in the semis after knocking Sweden out of the tournament. He left the NHL and signed with Locomotiv only two months before the tragedy.



I remember Pavol Demitra, who broke into the NHL with the St Louis Blues back in the mid-90s. He was always a top offensive player on those Slovak national teams.



I remember Brad McCrimmon, the retired NHL defenseman who was working to become a coach in Detroit but was let go. He then moved to Russia to achieve his goal.

oil street project

what I was working on today...



In the days before I died, I felt the gravity of the future pressing into my soul. This unbearable heaviness, I was sure, was the cause of my death. It started with an intense recognition of the men and women who would be dying here and how the shape of the land would be changing and how the things I thought were beautiful would no longer be. But to have such a picture of the future weigh inside of me so heavily as to have it devour my young and unaccomplished life was nonsense, for who in history had not lived into his future without the slightest longing for the simpler past? But let me tell you, my dread was of a different type. When I thought about the wear and tear that was to happen to this house in the coming years and years, I felt all the clamoring and battering that it was to endure, happening, inside of me, in an accelerated manner. In a day, I felt I aged a year. In a month, I had aged decades. But it was all happening internally. My physical appearance held up. I passed off as a very eligible, if not coveted, bachelor. I was something of a fashion connoisseur in those days, and today is no different, especially when I see I have guests. I intend to make myself presentable in case I happen to be captured on your cameras. But this weight, this dread, you would never understand.




1)

You have come at last, to see my home, this estate where I lived my final days. What brings you here? What brings you to open my doors and put my lights on and off and take pictures and examine the shapes of my windows? I am not upset. Feel free. Roam around. I have already let go, even of this house, even of the very room where I stayed through my dying days, I have let go.

I was very sick in the days leading up to my death, even though my appearance assumed nothing of that weathered look of the ill. I was, in their view, every bit normal. A thoughtful, well-mannered gentleman, they had often said. I never told anyone of my condition, and even if I did, no one would believe me, and I would have to convince them, somehow, of something they could not see with their eyes. This unbearable gravity of the near future, I would have to tell them, as though it was an object I could pull out of my pocket, hold in my palm, like a piece of crystal, “Don’t be deceived,” I wanted to tell them. “See how venomous it is?”

Of my grave condition, those who noticed merely said my decisions had taken on something of a quirky quality. I started to keep myself in that room, the tower, as they called it. Go ahead. Walk right in. If anything, you must understand, I had chosen to put myself there. They did not put it upon me. No. I chose to have that room all along. For someone so dreaded by the passivity of my condition and the sense of helplessness bestowed upon me by the sudden and intense recognition of the inevitable decay that was to come, choosing the place for my final retreat was the last bit of self-direction I could muster.

Notice, the neatly assembled terracotta plates that pave a road for me over the roof, giving me access, should my spontaneity take over in any unforgiving minute, I decide to skip out and venture across the fields and up the hills where I would evaporate and be read about in the morning paper. That was their wish. I did not grant them this pleasure. The tower, with its thick, hefty beams and acrid fragrance, still breathes an austere resilience.

as i stock up my ammunition

The view from inside Exchange Square in Central. A place like this can still be very much human, this early in the morning, when the local senior folks are going about their exercises, and the caretaker can go about cleaning slowly, still leisurely, just chilling until, in a few hours, the white collars and their fuck-you belt buckles and pointy leather shoes get released from their glass cages. It’s such a calm placid morning to be thinking about those animals.



Despite the coldness and the difficulty in being yourself when you’re surrounding by business restrictive attires, the building is still able to offer a shimmering glimpse in one of its more compelling nooks.



And then I am reminded of the possibility of becoming ten years younger if I use this cream for four weeks.



Then I wonder what the ten biggest problems are with my eyes. And I say to myself, “I need eye power.” I think of the Power Rangers...



...and suppose the five of them stand for one of your features, the moment they enter the big robot to fight the enemy, they strike nerdy poses and say, “Eye power!” and “Nose power!” and “Ear power!” and so on.



As a society, we cannot let this happen. We cannot continue to let these corporations test our level of tolerance for bad taste. We must strike back. This is killing us. They think we’re stupid and gullible and we must not let them continue to pollute our society by making us feel we are inadequate. They’ve been fucking us over and we allow them to do this to us but it’s time we fuck them over good, somehow, in a civilized way, of course. I don’t actually mean we can topple their regime just like that. But the very least we can do is talk back. Oh… Is that LL Cool J I hear in my head? “Think I’m gonna slay them farmers… (What) farmers… (What) I’m ready… (We’re ready) I think I’m gonna bomb a town… (Get down!) Don’t you never ever pull my lever… coz I explode…. And my nine is easy to load…. I’ve gotta thank God… coz he gave me the chance to rock… Hard~ Knock you out.~” Love it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vimZj8HW0Kg&ob=av3e



And how often does it happen that the actual product is better than the picture. A reason to rejoice.