I Know A Rocket Scientist

And he used to play Transformers on his Commodore 64.

Perhaps it’s just that I have a supernaturally high amount of intelligent friends, but when I see stuff like what my old childhood (And still dear) friend Francis Poulin has accomplished, wanting to be a novelist doesn’t really seem like that big a deal. I can’t even understand what the hell his accomplishments are and reading is supposed to be one of my professional skills. The only sheer flow I ever see oscillate is on my girlfriend’s stockings when she walks around, but I don’t think that’s quite the same thing. I think I might have taken a barotropically unstable jet once to Bali, but that’s only because the air conditioning was busted and there was some turbulence…

Would you believe I used to make fun of this guy and make him cry?

Jeeeeeeesus…

While I was busy being neurotic and angst ridden, he was quietly going about becoming a fuckin’ math genius. Some people just know how to utilize their time better, I guess…

And For All The Edmontonians Out There

Holy Fuck.

Just read Karen (She of the endless wit) Chow’s blog and heard about the fire on Whyte Ave.

For me personally, the only rational response is:

NOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

OH GOD, WHY DIDN’ T YOU TAKE ME INSTEAD?!?

Edmonton friends can click off now for the next paragraph.

Asian readers can know this: Whyte Avenue is the designated Old Quarter of Edmonton where you’ll find all your 19th and early 20th century style buildings that still has the “old town thoroughfare” sort of feel to it. Littered with Mom n’ Pop establishments where the owners actually man the cash register and know their products (Assuming they don’t make them, or don’t have them made by friends) Whyte Ave has always been the traditional home of folksiness, artsiness (It’s a true Bohemian enclave, unlike the artificial ones that Singapore is trying to create) and its proximity to the university campus guarantees a certain minimum amount of hipness and attitude. This is where my beloved Princess Theatre (The local art house cinema, something Singapore is, again, UTTERLY devoid of) used to be, Greenewoods, the bookshop, Warp One, the geek comic store (Which I’ve been told is slowly degenrating into a pool of greedy, commercial insanity) and more bars and cafes than you can swing a dead cat at. I spent a good number of years unsuccessfully trying to finish the macho nacho platter at Squire’s Taven, home of free food on Friday nights. Played pool at the 24 hours pool hall just down the street. Went down for the Fringe Festival to take in many bad amateur plays and a suprisingly large number of good ones, and basically have invested the entire street with being a significant part of my formative years in university, which is when I actually consider myself to have become interesting and more or less human.

Having Whyte Ave go up in flames like that is kind of like finding out the playground I used to love as a kid has been paved over to make way for a bordello. That’s just wrong.

Man, they weren’t kidding when they said you can’t go home again.

Now I feel like I have to try and include Whyte Ave into the Jen story I’m writing, since it takes place during roughly the same period that I was going to university anyway. If I can’t have the real thing, I may as well try and at least preserve the nostalgia of it…

Now Is The Time For Quick And Immediate Response

To possible latent homophobic tendencies. Or something.

A day or so ago, I read a blog by the boyfriend of a friend of mine, who, not just a few hours earlier, we had seen at his place of work while having coffee. Said boyfriend of friend is a student of human observation and thus, observed, from his own blog, this:

anyway ching yee went to spin @ hrn wif her frens wayne and charlene today. and its ironic dat someone quite the looker like wayne actually detests workin wif ppl in the media…the beautiful mtv types as he calls it. well when he came by wif his kitaro hairdo and all and i noticed a bunch of gay guys turning their heads to look at him. hey maybe he should model for gay quaterly or something. heard dey pay really well.

This caused me no end of mild (Or even wild, swinging from one end of the emotional spectrum to other) apoplectic hysteria as, contrary to numerous speculations (grudgingly, I admit, deserved by my total lack of girlfriend for decades on end…) as to my sexual preferences, I am not gay.

For the record, I am primarily straight, with possible repressed bisexual tendencies. While I do like girls, (It’s that soft n’ purty hair that I wanna’ touch that does it every time, damn them…) I would be mad to refuse A) Daniel Day Louis, B) Jude Law or C) Peter Jackson if they propositioned me. Although I have had an alarmingly high rate of unasked for success when it comes attracting the Y.M.C.A contingent.

I remember once at some gay club that no longer exists in Edmonton when I got dragged down to support a couple of friends, Valentino Wong and Michael Pylko (Hey, whatever happened to those guys anyway?) that I found myself getting hit on, in rapid succession over a matter of just a few minutes, a flurry of flabby, deep voiced and decidedly oogy guys. My only explanation for this is the whole “Delicate Flower of the Orient Thing,” since I’m slim and “oriental looking” and all that, and maybe the fact that I was the only guy not wearing shoes. Perhaps that’s cute, or some secret gay-lingo sign (Sort of like the signals hobos leave for each other to describe possible places of generosity) that indicates “I will do it without lube.”

For someone who desperately wished that the opposite sex would pay some attention to him and wondered why it wasn’t happening, this was a horrifying possible explanation. My friends, in true comradely fashion, left me high and dry to stutter my way through various conversations with men that 1) Immediately sat down and started stroking my forearm, B) Grabbed the fashion program out of my hand and asked me to explain it to them while their nose was 2 millimeters from my own, C) Grabbed said program out of my hands, put it on their crotch and asked me, “What does this say?”

After watching me flounder for a bit, my friends realized that there was a very real possibility that my hysterical muteness might just be taken as a sign of silent consent, and so in order to keep my virgin body cavity just that way, they finally grabbed me by the arm and literally dragged me away shouting, “THERE YOU ARE! WE’VE BEEN LOOKING ALL OVER FOR YOU, THE CAR’S PARKED OUTSIDE!” And then berating me afterwards for somehow throwing out a magnetic force that only people of a specific sexual wavelength responded to. I don’t remember her name, but some girl asked me, “It’s not FAIR! What do you have that I don’t?” And by God, I wanted to smack her somethin’ awful…

Even if I were gay, I think I would have been horrified by these come ons. Flattered, but horrified. I’m a wine and roses kind’a guy. Tell me about my eyes, say I have really deep thoughts, don’t stick your tongue down my throat on the first date, and no matter what anyone tells you, they can say “No!” even after penetration and it’s still considered rape.

In Other News

The concept proposal was favorably received with the SMS message from Nadya, and I quote:

“I love the attack of the giant squid!”

No, I am not making this up.

Yes, I managed to squeeze a giant squid attack into a concept proposal. Do not ask how, do not ask why, that is the secret of my genius.

Man. I was so sure she was going to make me take that squid part out…

I’m A Nice Guy. I Own Slaves And Abandon Wives, But Really, I’m Nice!

This is what I keep telling myself as I tackle my latest assignment. I’m supposed to do a write up for a museum here, a 1st person narrative, about 1,000 words, telling the story of a famous historical figure, in this case Ibn Battuta, who the girlfriend has christened “Batman” and which I am sticking with, ’cause it’s just easier to pronounce and doesn’t make me feel like I’m ordering the dish of the day at some Turkish restaurant.

“Hm… I’ll have the Ibn Battuta, please. And don’t cheap out on the saurkraut like you did the last time.”

Anyway, Batman was an Islamic explorer in the 14th century who ranged across Africa, central Asia, Asia and South East Asia, and is, by all accounts, a sort of Islamic Marco Polo, eventually having a record of his 24 year journey recorded for posterity.

Frankly, I just don’t like this guy.

For one thing, he easily qualifies as The Most Easily Impressed Human Being On Earth. When he visits a town, it is, “The finest town in the world, a shimmering jewel of Africa, and equalled by none other on Earth.” When he visits another town, it is, “Simply, undeniably, the greatest town of this age, and shall never be surpassed.” When he visits cities, he practically has an orgasm, and let us not even get into his opinion of the Mosques he sees. I’m sure some tenet must be deeply violated by the spasmodic rapture he expresses on them. If he were a modern guy, he’d definitely be a DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball player.

He is also, I think, what my university friends might have referred to as a Trysexual: Try dogs, cats, boys, girls, holes in trees…

Upon meeting with certain King, who was versed in poetry and composition, Batman said “This is the most beautiful human being on Earth!” and spent much time with him, doing things he refuses to get into. Hm… not too difficult to read between the lines there. However, over the course of his 24 year vacation, he laid a swathe of alimony across the world, marrying women willy nilly, leaving children behind, some of whom died before he ever met them, and purchasing numerous slave girls who were “Of undeniable beauty, undoubtededly the most charming creature the world has ever seen.”

He also got frequently beaten and robbed and left for penniless, but I figure that’s just karmic payback for all the times he was a jerk.

Of course, the part that really pissed me off was when he wrote of his yearning for home and how strongly it called to him, for nothing affects the heart as truly and deeply as one’s homeland, finally returned after 24 years, spent a week there and then went on another trip across the Sahara desert.

Jerk.

So now I find myself in the unenviable position of having to write a “Hi kids! I’m Ibn Buttata!” sort of 1,000 word essay which is supposed to leave the less savoury parts of his nature (Homosexuality, debauchery, slaving and multiple abandoned wives and children) out, while still sticking to the facts. They want historical accuracy that’s not going to disturb the innocent world view of the kiddies.

And yet, I can’t help writing this thing out, imagining that it’s all being retold by Micky Mouse with a fez on his head:

Batman: And then I went on my Haj to Mecca, and oh BOY! Was that ever fun, wasn’t it Pluto?!?

Pluto: PRAISE ALLAH!

Batman: Hawhawhaw! Right you are, Pluto! There was the Kabaa, and fasting, and reading the Koran, and I married two women, bought a really cute slave girl, then left th
em all at the harbor when someone offered me a free ride to Calcutta! What an adventure! Hawhawhaw!

As God is my witness, I’ll never, ever understand how I get roped into these things…

Oh And On Another Note:

Congratulations go out to Danger Gene Whitlock who’s wife brought in a bouncing baby Ninja into the world at 9:09 pm last night. The baby, Alexander Valentine Whitlock, (Referred to by his alter ego super-hero name “Lex”) will be petitioning for membership into Justice League Infants as soon as he can go potty by himself. If I knew how to stick pictures in this damn thing, I would, but unfortunately I’m just not that technically savvy…

Stupid, STUPID Day…

Unlike the nudists who insist that winter was invented by the clothing companies, I think there is something to the conspiracy of Valentine’s Day being invented by the candy & greeting card market. For just a few dollars on this one special day, you can go out and make a declaration of your love that they guarantee can’t be expressed in months or years of loyalty, devotion, laughter, tears or emotional bonding.

Of course, despite all this, that didn’t stop me from scurrying off and buying the meager rose I could afford, or writing the love letter, or placing these pathetic love offerings on the girlfriend’s drawing table while she sleeps (and is still sleeping as of the moment of this writing) hoping that this will be enough to placate her and say, “I really care, but I’m also really broke right now, so please don’t make me sleep on the couch tonight…”

Of course, in a sick, sad, emotionally retarded sort of way, it’s also a kick and a half, since this is the first time I’ve ever actually been in a position where I COULD get someone Valentine’s Day stuff, so there’s that victim of consumerist-societal-conditioning that whispers, “Yes! There is someone I have to spend money on! I AM AT LONG LAST A REAL BOY! HOLD ME, GEPETTO! NO, NOT THERE, YOU OLD LECH…”

So yeah, for those of you who were regular victims of my old mass mails before I started blogging, there will be, much to your relief, no Valentine’s Day rant about how much you all suck, how much I hate you all, and how much I’m going to punish myself because someone loves you and no one loves me, so there… Yeah, and I’m reeeeeal sure you’re all going to miss its absence this year…

The Bedtime Blog

Real quick, ’cause it’s nearly 10 am, which is past my bedtime.

I did NOTHING interesting or think anything interesting today. Yesterday I read a monumentally bad, bad BAD short story by someone who arbitrarily decided he wanted to be a writer and get a book published with no previous literary experience. To be fair, the person was Singaporean, and they tend to believe that anything not in Business or Science is easy. More ranting about that and what makes bad writing when I wake up.

Other than that… Had friends over. Subtly observed behavior of friend’s new boyfriend and the verdict is, “That homey’s all right. He be chillin’ in da hood.” At least it’s a nice change of pace because he seems like a normal guy living in a normal world instead of the usual high drama or economically high powered characters I’ve known over the last few years. I forgot that the people and stuff in the middle comprise the vast majority of the universe and this was a pleasant brush with it once more.

And the mindless domination of Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto III continues. I’m finally getting around to playing this game again, but, as usual, obsessive compulsive disorder combined with the dreaded Gamer’s Pride kicked in, and I won’t let up until I get 100% completion of the game which involves numerous difficult and/or tedious side missions. To date, I have rescued 421 people in the paramedic mission. A horrifying figure, because it’s nearly more than I’ve killed. Still, I’m, working hard on that body count, and with any luck, my young, malleable mind can be evilly influenced by this game and then I can go out, kill someone, and take no responsibility for my actions as I blame it on the game, the media rallies around me, and I talk about it in tearful recollection on Oprah, only to stop when she hugs me and I fight to find a breath hole in the midst of that massive cleavage.

God, I sure hope I don’t dream of that when I go to bed…

Game-u Show-oo! YOSH!

When I’m not having nightmares, I’m having bizarre afternoons.

Yesterday I helped out my friend Amelia with what’s called a “Promo”, short for promotion. This particular promo was kind of pseudo commercial meant for networks and advertisers for a game show called “Chain Reaction.” It’s a sort of a low-budget affair that relies on groups of people running around with cheap cameras. I was one of those people.

The premise of the show works like this: You have two hosts, in this case, some Korean-American named Christian and a local girl named Claudine. They were the usual sort, very pretty to look at, nice teeth, sociable and all that. Christian was the “hoster” and Claudine was the “runner”. I’ll explain in a second.

First the they had to locate two people who would act as “Team Captains.” What this consisted of was just running around the street, in this case, East Coast Park on a Saturday morning, asking people, “Hey, you wanna kill a few hours and be on a game show?” If they agreed, then there would be a sort of “coin toss” question. Whoever answered it first and correctly would get to make the first move.

Now here’s where the actual show begins. Christian went up to a vantage point. We found a garden/dining rooftop area on one of the restaurants on the restaurant strip that looked out on the beach. With the two team captains, Christian then presented them with a series of questions. The captain would pick one question, and then would have to look out onto the vista of the beach at all the people rollerblading, dogwalking or singing “Kumbaya” with their fellow Christians on the guitar, and pick someone that looked like they might know the answer to the question. That’s the basis of the show, first impressions. Once the team captain had someone they thought was capable of answering the question (Example, a beer question. Hey, maybe that guy sitting at the table with a huge pitcher of beer might know the answer…) Claudine, who had a radio mike linked to Christian at the roof, had to follow his directions and go run over to the person selected and ask them if they wanted to play. If they said “No,” the chain was “broken” and the question was turned over to the opposing captain who also had to pick someone. If they wanted to play but got the wrong answer, the “chain” was broken again, and same principle applied. If the selected person got it right, then they formed a new link in the “chain” and had to go up to the vantage point to join the team captain who’d correctly picked them. This went on until a chain of five people had been formed, at which point the host asked each individual a question, and they ALL had to get the right answer in order for them to win the $5000 which would be split five ways for $1000 each.

Nice, in theory.

In reality here’s what happened.

First, it was a promo, so there was no prize money. Second, this is Singapore, so they aren’t exactly the most extroverted people in the world. This is an island where people at a “Blur” concert politely clap and remain in their seats, and where people on the street see a camera and go out of their way to avoid it. They do NOT like public appearances here, let alone acting up. Third, this is Singapore, so unfortunately it always seems like the women are the informed, educated ones, and the guys are just silly dorks that constantly say “Ah?” whenever meager brains can’t process the incoming information, which is 9 out of 10 times generally.

Are you smelling the doom yet?

Anyway, after meeting at McDonald’s for breakfast and a recap of who was doing what, we were off. I was thrown my little Digital Video cam (It’s a Sony!) and was assigned to Claudine, the runner, who or more or less had to endure my droll, off-the-cuff observations of the people, landscape and her hair.

Things fell apart shortly after that.

We did manage to locate team captains. We wanted a girl and a guy. We found a shy local girl named “Valentine,” and couldn’t find any local guys at all that could speak, let alone knew what the hell we were saying to them, so in the end, opted for white bread again, and found some Brit with a cute Asian girlfriend named Heather, whom Christian immediately started hitting on, even though she wasn’t a part of the show. Amelia was already starting to feel the pressure, but then she knew the pressure that was coming. Trying to get a Singaporean to appear on TV and be lively and spontaneous is kind of like trying to get the Pope out for a night of nacho and bowling. It didn’t help that most of the so-called easy questions were difficult for most people to answer.

So once the team captains were selected, we went for our first completely random and spontaneously chosen link in the chain, who, due to lack of anyone at the time having the guts to appear on camera, turned out to be the British sister of one of the other camera men, who had tagged along just to see some of the fun.

She randomly plucked herself down on a bench that was conveniently easy to see from the rooftop, and then she was randomly selected by the team captains, after said captains were told, “Pick her.”

Then Claudine and I randomly ran over to her, with Amelia as the unobtrusive “friend who just happened to be there” at the bench, and Claudine asked her the question, which our pre-planted, pre-briefed, randomly selected contestant spectacularly failed to answer. (It was, “Name the author of the Harry Potter books”) and Amelia was trying to whisper without her lips moving, “J.K. Rowling. J.K. Rowling…” and accidently ended up answering the question, so we had to inform our random contestant of what the answer was, coach her on how to spontaneously search the tip of her tongue for the answer, then go for completely random take two.

It went on like this for most of the morning. Amelia was a real pro. She ran around in happy-go-lucky desperation trying–and usually failing–to find people willing to play. One guy even went so far as to say ‘It’s my Saturday, leave me alone,” without even breaking stride when Amelia came up to him, which was totally amazing to me, because Amelia is really cute, and most guys give her the time of day without her asking for it. On my side, I had a very typical Singaporean encounter when I was hanging with Claudine, smoking a cigarette while Amelia looked for more random contestants to brief beforehand. Some kid on bike came up to us, seeing the crews with the cameras and boom mikes and said “What TV show is this?”

Claudine said, “It’s a game show. Wanna’ play?”

In true Singaporean fashion his eyebrows narrowed, probably imagining the money involved and he asked, “How much do I get if I play?”

I could not help rolling my eyes at this.

Claudine explained that it was promo sort of thing, and that for now, he’d get a voucher for a DVD or CD at HMV, and when the kid realized that no money was forthcoming, said something like, “Uh… I’m seventeen, I don’t think I can appear in this without parental consent,” and then promptly biked off to the periphery of the shooting activities to watch and try to appear in the background waving at people.

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice…

Amelia found more people to feed answers to, nearly all of whom were girls. The guys were just hopelessly shy, or maybe just plain hopeless. One point, we thought we’d a really bright and energetic pair of guys who looked really interesting with their somewhat punkish hairstyles and gleeful smiles and Amelia proceeded to interrogate them.

“Hey, do you want to appear in a game show?”

“Yes!”

“Great! We need your friend to say no, and you to say ‘yes,” can you do that?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, could you just stand over there?”

“Yes!” He didn’t do it and continued to smile.

“Okay, just move over there, right?”

“Yes!” Same reaction.

“Do you speak English?”

“Yes!”

“Do you not speak English?”

“Yes!”

“Where are you from?”

“Yes!”

At this point a whole bunch of similarly cool friends showed up, and they all started chattering amongst themselves. In Japanese.

“You’re Japanese?!?”

“Yes!”

“You don’t speak English, do you?”

“Yes!”

Amelia looks at me with a helpless, “This is so fucked!” sort of smile on her face.

Some guy that DOES speak English shows up and explains that this is a tour group of Japanese students who is going back to Tokyo tomorrow. Amelia explains the situation to him, he translates, and the whole group starts saying, “GAME-U SHOW-OO! GAME-U SHOW-OO! HAI! HAI, HAI, HAI!”

The translator explains that they ALL want to play.

I’m cracking up at this point.

Amelia comes up with a plan, since we haven’t had people refuse to play on camera yet, so she tells him to tell them that they need to say “No.” He translate and they start saying, “No! Hai! No!”

Amelia plants them all over by a tree and tries to get them to sit down naturally. They’re all saying “Sit-u! Sit-u!” and not doing it. Amelia gets down on her haunches. They imitate. She tells them to sit in a circle. They start saying “Sit-u circle-u!” and get in a perfect, not very natural looking circle, all on their haunches. I decide to not help matters any by shouting out Japanese words I picked up from anime, like “Yosh!”

“YOSH! YOSH, YOSH, YOSH! HAI!” they reply.

“Mobile Suit Gundam-u!’

“Ah! Gundam! HAI!”

“Akira!”

“HAI!”

“Tetsuuuuuo! Kaneeeeeeda!”

“HAI!”

Amelia is just about ready to kill them and me. She grabs Claudine and tells her to go over and ask them if they want to play. Claudine rushes up to them and says, “Hey, do any of you want to play a game?”

“YES, YES, YES!”

Now Amelia is going to cry.

After more translating, the students finally get it and start dropping all these “Sumimasen!”s and Claudine trys again. This time they’re all smiling, waving their arms in denial and saying “NO, NO, NO!” while laughing all the while.

Later on Amerlia has completely given up on any male that looks Asian and is sticking with the white boys. Things are getting desperate. Every person willing to play who has been able to answer is an educated Chinese girl, the men are all hopeless. Christian the other host has now switched from hitting on Heather the girlfriend of the other team captain (Who has been eliminated by this point anyway) to Mary, some Chinese Baywatch girl in bikini, white shorts and rollerblades, who was picked as a contestant. Amelia finds another white guy, really enthusiastic, seems to be Dutch or something, he can’t speak English to save his life, or at the very least, seems to process English in some obscure Dutch fashion that requires him to repeat the question, then go off on some existential tanget about despair and suicide with a smile on his face. Whatever.

Some other white guy goes biking towards us.

Amelia literally throws herself in front of the bike, arms held up, and screams “DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?!?”

“Uh… yes.”

“HELP ME OUT WITH THIS GAME, GODDAMMIT…”

“Ooookay…”

So we get all the people up there, the chain has been formed. Christian is going into OTT American Gameshow Host mode and is probably scaring some of the girls with his seemingly cocaine-inspired antics. All of the contestants have been briefed and the answers fed ahead of time. We get our carefully planned, completely scripted, totally spontaneous and improvised reaction shot of all our happy winners. Amelia is just about ready to sleep for a week.

Later on, we’re back at my place, having coffee, we’re both relating the day to my girlfriend, and all I can think over and over again is the same thought that’s been bugging me for the last few years in this biz.

Anyone who says TV is glamorous don’t work in it.

Game-u Show-oo! YOSH!

My First Non-Girlfriend Link!

Okay, so it’s a close personal friend of mine, but still! I don’t sleep with her, that’s gotta’ count for somethin’, right?!?

Look, look, looky! Look what she said about me!

“about bloody time! “shoeless” wayne santos finally has a blog! thrill to the adventures of this bitter, cynical (yet still hopeful) bastard, livin’ and lovin’ in singapore…and working, sort of…and writing…and playing GTA III…and cracking LOTR jokes…hey, where are you going? don’t pretend you don’t know what i’m talking about. go to his blog already, you big nerd!”

I would like to state for the record however that I am not a big nerd.

I’m a skinny one.

And if you want to find out who Karen Chow (She of the endless wit) is, she has a pseudo blog on her own snazzy website that you can find here.

I like Karen. She was my funky, insane Chinese friend. I first met her in Creative Writing Class. She was wearing a straw hat, knee socks and carrying a violin. It all pretty much went downhill from there, because I was the only one in the class sufficiently geeky enough to not be viewed a threat, and thus, friendship was inevitable. Now she’s doing great and someday I’ll be sitting around back at her place, quoting “Merry Christmas Charlie Brown” along with the TV while she stares in awe.