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Blah!
I'm sorry, 20six. I really am. We've had some great times and you've been with me for almost five years, but the truth is, I don't think it's working out anymore. There've been so many times when I've needed you and you weren't there and all I get in return is 'server too busy'. We can't connect anymore, you and I. Not like we used to. I've... I've found someone else. Someone who's not as fast as you were back in the day but with a lot more to offer. And that someone is never too busy. That someone is called Tera, and her pad is a lot nicer. I know it's hard. Saying goodbye always is. But, if you're in the neighborhood, do drop by. You can find me by clicking here. All the best, 20six. We had a good run. At least I got to write a post on you one last time, even if it is to tell you that I've moved on. Take care, and don't let the annal fissure disturb you too much. - Justin Guber If you've somehow ended up at this blog because of the title and were looking for some good ol' Alisha Klass butt-banging frolics, my apologies, but I just put that title up because I couldn't think of anything else. Stick your cock back in your pants and go find something else to wank about. Unless you wank about the writings of a pensive man. If this is so, again, please put your cock back in your pants. If you're a woman, though, that is a different story, and... Hmmm. I digress. Back to the plot. So some of you have been wondering what's been going on with the Guber. True, I used to write a shit load more back in the day, and as the year closed in to 2008 whatever random bursts of writings that would have popped up almost vanished into nothingness. Well, there's a reason for that... ...and I'm not going to tell you. Now, there's often been a few things that I'm not willing to tell you good folks about. Not many, but there have been a few occasions when this was so. This is one of those occasions. Perhaps in the near future I will let you all know, once things are set in stone and officially official, but until such time, I'm keeping schtum. What I will say is this: things are better. Much better. I didn't think they'd get better, but the change was pretty much instantaneous. 2008 has brought forth some incredibly drastic changes in my life, but changes that are all for the better. I am reborn, recharged, re-educated and ready to rock out with my cock out. Not literally, of course. If anything, the events that have led up to this fateful year of our lord 2008 has been nothing short of insurmountably mental, but it's the fuckups in life and the way we handle them that leave us less fucked. And I'm sure there was a less profane way of saying the above, but the adage still stands. ...Shit, what does 'adage' mean again? I was googling my random googles when I remembered some of the reasons why this blog came into fruition and what I intended of it. I first started it as a place to type out my memories and small little bits of fiction. I remember who I was going out with at the time, too (but we shan't mention her). I remember starting this blog in Subang, and writing posts about my cat when I was a child and my love for Back to the Future. A while later and the blog was almost forgotten, until I started work at Grey. I looked up the blog account again, saw it was still active, and started writing again. I was pretty much inspired by Warren Ellis' blog, especially his comment on how he sticks whatever he comes across on the net or gets e-mailed on his blog, and how this all fuses into an idea for his writing. Being in a working environment, I kept getting mailed some incredibly weird shit, most of which ended up on the 'Shocking Asia' section of the blog. I then started using it to pimp out my gigs, bands and movies, occasionally writing my own personal thoughts and little snippets of ficiton wherever I saw fit. And then I started slowing down. Life, to me, seems to be lacking in focus at the moment. I find myself in a state where I even checked out 'Death Clock' to see when I'll most likely clock it (the answer is 2046, apparently. Even my date of death is movie related). I'm slowly pulling myself out of this, getting little nuggets of ideas to flesh out, but this lack of focus is killing me, making it harder and harder to be excited about life in general. My usual sarcasm, cynicism and impromptu randomness of my past entries is more and more lacking as time passes by. Sigh... I need a jolt. A thunderbolt. A big, fat kick up the back side. I need a push, a shove, some fire in the furnace. A tune-up, perhaps even an overhaul, a route on a map, a destination to get to. I need inspiration, motivation, aspirations and perspiration. I need a reason. Or maybe I just need a big, fat line of coke. I wasn't even looking at the time. I didn't have too. As soon as midnight rolled around to usher in the brand spanking new year the fireworks set off with a bang into the night sky and crowds outside whooped and cheered and shouted and yelled in merriment. Not me. I've been very pensive, of late. I've never like the months between September and February as it is usually the time of the year when I'm at my most negative. The worst period of this was probably in the winter months between 2000 and 2001. Winter in London means the sun rises late and sets early, and I always seemed to fall asleep just as the sun came up and wake up just as it went down, leaving me a vampire, roaming the night, pensive. The lack of sun, the loneliness and the events that unfolded during that time (which shall not be mentioned to protect the innocent, including myself) left me an emo wreck, listening to the Deftones' "White Pony" album on repeat within the confines of my room. Here, the sun is bright and shinning, but I find myself, over the past few months, following a similar routine. I don't sleep till 4am, sometimes as late/early as 6.30am, and I find myself waking up later and later. On the final day of the year 2007, I woke up at 4.30pm. I slept earlier that day at 7am. 2007 was quite the sporadic year, as far as blog entries went. The posts were few and far between and usually took the form of some kind of pimping of whatever endeavor I was involved in at the time. Was this because I was busy? Perhaps. For the first half of the year, perhaps. But I've been busier. At the height of my blog entries, I was working an advertising job whilst also recording an album and shooting a movie. That was almost three years ago. The truth is, I didn't know what to write. The reason I have this blog is not just to pimp out my increasing number of endeavors, but to write what's on my mind. I'd find a comfy place to plug in my wifi card in my (now ancient) laptop and type away, lost in the realm of words, the keyboard my conduit. But the places are not comfy anymore, and the words aren't coming to me. The mind is in a maze and the heart is in knots. Things are wibbly-wobbly indeed. I hope it's not the same for you. ... ...great fucking way to start the first post in this blog for 2008, huh? Pray for something weird to come my way. Like a herd of wilderbeast or something. Go on. Do it for daddy. So I've already gotten as far as Bangkok, waiting for my connecting flight to Heathrow. I'm in a cybercafe of sorts in an incredibly tiny chair which either suggests Thai's are very tiny or I've got a fat ass. (Cue shit-loads of comments added on how it's my fat ass). I have not slept since the day before, except for sporadic naps on the flight from KL to here, and my legs feel wonky. On top of that, the second hand mp3 player I bought and spent ages loading songs into in the wee hours before leaving to the airport has a) riddled my laptop with viruses and b) refused to play on the pretext that it's run out of batteries, even though I've been charging it like a motherfucker. So this is why people pay the extra dollar for iPods. Still got an hour ago before my connecting flight and am in desperate need to empty my bowels in the packed toilets here. May buy a magazine, or just sit in the tiny smoking room on the verge of tears from all the contained smoke and lack of ventilation. I'm going to arrive in London smelling like a Phillip Morris factory worker. Nothing changes. As most of you who've known me for a while (as in socially, not just through the words typed here), I've been gaining weight steadily since 2003. I tend to attribute this to my change in lifestyle during that time - I quit skating, moved into my own appartment where I ate only fast food, and pretty much never got off my fat ass. And now I have a belly so big people assume I'm a genetic experiment to see whether or not men can give birth. To twins. So recently I decided, once and for all, to get into something healthy. Now, this is a bit of a difficulty for me, not just because of my schedule, but because of my stance towards gyms. See, I don't believe in gyms. I don't understand them. Treadmills make me feel like a hamster, and I cannot get my head around the concept of getting fit for the sake of getting fit. It feels like the only goal to be achieved in going to the gym is to look good, full stop. Yes, I know it sounds stupid considering that's what my aim is in the first place, but that's just me. I prefer getting fit through a form of exercise where I'm learning something, like a sport. Therein comes the problem as I've never been good at team sports of any kind. That's why I got into skating, it's a personal thing. I could roll around that board as much as I want and no one would be giving me shit for not passing properly (although occasionally kids would laugh at me for not being able to do half the tricks they can do). But the board is gone, and I decided to get into something else. Boxing. It of course didn't hurt that I was a huge Bruce Lee fan when I was a young teenager. But, now that I'm older, I didn't want to do any Eastern martial arts mainly because I didn't want to have to memorize hundreds of punches, kicks, graples, katas, etc. I wanted to do something similar to a martial art, but not. Hence, boxing. The good thing about boxing is that there are only four punches, a few blocks and a bunch of leg work. The skill comes from combining them corectly. And the good thing for someone like me taking up boxing is the workout. My God, the workout kills me. For a guy that can do, at the most, twenty sit ups and a handful of push ups, going through the routine in boxing has me sweating like a priest in a nunnery within the first five minutes. I had no idea jumping jacks were so goddamn tiring! I now have an incredible new found respect for boxers. The amount of stamina and strength required is unparalled. I'm dying after a minute of punching just a bag, and yet these professionals stay in the ring for 3 minutes a round for twelve rounds?! Wow. Mucho respecto. It's also a great way to work out aggresion. Especially during the time I joined I had a lot of pent up aggression in me and what better way to let it all out then to whack a big ol' punching bag. But, let's face facts here, it's still early days and I'm still a tubby weakling. I tweaked my wrist (the same bad wrist that I tweaked when shooting the chase scene in Ciplak), I wake up the day after a session aching all over and everyone else in the class has much more stamina than me. I'm hoping I don't give up this class. The monthly payments should give me enough incentive to go so as to not waste that money. The more I look at myself and realise my age the more I feel the need to get healthier before this lifestyle of mine catches up to me and escalates into a hundred and one medical bills by the time I'm thirty. Need to get fitter. Of course, considering I'm writing this in coffee bean whilst drinking fattening caffeine-infused latte's and smoking cigarettes, it's gonna take a while. And so it begins. The soundbites alone are pure cliche. I have heard these words uttered by my peers when I was the same age. And watching it at this age is fucking hillarious. "Suck it in." "You're not doing it properly!" "Cough... cough... cough...! Ewww...!" "Awesome, isn't it?" "Don't tell anyone I took a puff." "You light another one and I'll try another one." "I don't want to get addicted." "You won't. I've gone a week without it. It's easy." "I feel like there's something in my throat that's stuck." "Isn't it cool?" "Ok, take a deep breath... now release...! Feels good, no?" "COUGH! My breath stinks now!" "It's ok, you're still young..." The one with braces speaks with pure teenage confidence. You know the type I'm talking about - the fake confidence of youth, bordering on pomposity and arrogance. The type of confidence you can get away with at that age. God, this makes me feel old. Another question has popped up in my head: why am I not stopping this? Am I bad for not stopping this? Am I not doing my duty as someone who's gone through the same thing and am now stuck on fifty sticks a day? No. I'm watching kids growing up. And it's their choice. I know this confidence/arrogance. I know this scene. I've lived it, and I know that if some tubby fuck came up to me and started giving me the whole "when I was a lad" crap I'd give him a dose of that confidence. And if they're as stupid as me, well, tough titty. But if catch my brother with a pack I'm kicking his ass. Woke up on the wrong side of the bed today, thanks to the news that a person we've needed to contact but seems to have been avoiding us for the past two weeks has finally admited that he's scared of helping us out with an upcoming event due to a very ignorant and uninformed assumption on the event. So, instead of telling us this two weeks ago so that we could find someone else, he avoids us. Runs to the shadows, cowering like a rat. More and more delays with this event that we shall not speak of till the time is right. Delays left, right and center thanks to people like this. This, and more. Another delay was caused out of pure greed on the part of the other party, so greedy they were that they wanted us to agree to a deal that very blatantly states that we'll lose money. Why, in the name of all things bright and fucking beautiful, would anyone agree to that?! Why, why in unholy fuck do these people wish to fuck with us? And why, godammit, why am I putting up with this?! It's hit the last fucking straw now. We are in supernova. I am Peter Petrelli, and I'm about to blow Manhattan the fuck up. ...shit, did I just give away the plot of 'Heroes' to all of you who are watching it week-by-week? (Written during the early hours of this morning when I was supposed to be working. Could end up becoming something, another novella maybe, but for now it's just ramblings. Read if you dare.) It’s almost one on a Monday morning and I have realized that I am too damn lazy and/or tired to do anything, least of all my work. It could be the chicken that is causing this. The genetically engineered monstrosities designed by Colonel Saunders’ evil offspring, fried in a bucket of oil with secret herbs and spices that may or may not include diseased human entrails. We will never know the Colonel’s secret, but we can be sure that nastiness is afoot. A foul nastiness that has caused my motor functions to slow down and make my stomach yearn to release a shit my intestines and sphincter flat out refuse to help with. Perhaps they are lazy and/or tired too. Perhaps it’s the lack of a television, the cathode tube that runs the huge Italian beast gave way through Austin Powers’ third and final jaunt, getting progressively darker till I couldn’t see a damn thing and hear nothing but the sound of someone pissing, either a scene from the movie or the evil gremlin inside leaving its mark before scuttling off to another electric appliance. The TV is my friend, and it often gets me into the right state of mind. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because the work in question is not immediate in its deadline. That’s usually one of the deciding factors when it comes to my… my… Bugger me, I’m even forgetting words now… …PRODUCTIVITY. That’s the one. ‘Productivity’. Or, in this case, a lack of. I have work to do. I know that much. But it is not really required tomorrow. It would be productive and pro-active and well managed of me to do it tonight, now, whilst the deadline is still far away, but I am none of these things. I live off the eleventh hour. No. That’s not true. I THRIVE on it. It’s the lack of immediate deadlines that has screwed me the most these past few opening months of the seventh year of the 21st century, a bright shiny new age where all the techno-fears will finally rear their ugly little heads. And as evil robots enslave humanity and we begin downloading information directly into our brains and genetic engineering reaches a point where we can all have gills if we want to, you’ll hear me in the background, talking to myself. “Fuck me,” I’ll say, “the Doctor was right.” But enough about the future. We need to talk of the here and now and why I’m typing this. Perhaps they are notes towards something greater, perhaps they’ll just end up as an entry on my blog, the 21st century way for people to write diaries in secret whilst telling everyone at the same time, with none of the actual facing-up involved. What I do know is this: I have many things to write and design and create. I have no immediate deadlines, true, but there’s something I am lacking that is more dire and depressing than that: I have no drive. So that’s what this is, ladies and gents: my jumper cables. Writing about the here and now, inane gibberish in a style stolen from many other more successful and noted masters of the English language, because at least I’m writing. That’s what’s important, that I’m doing something creative. That’s what my blog was designed for in the first place when I first opened the account – so that when all else fails, I’ll still be creating, even if all I’m doing is putting a different spin to the events that have or are happening in my life or the random thoughts of this nicotine and Colonel-fat diseased brain – at least I’m still using the ol’ noggin. A lot of that drive disappeared around the first month of this year. After the Anugerah Skrin win, calls came from every direction with possible jobs for directing and writing a number of TV movies, shows, features, etc. It was my jump into the industry and it made me realize one thing – that working with dumb-ass clients was exactly why I left the advertising industry. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth and most of all, it made me question the point in following up my first feature. I had forced myself, throughout that month, to squeeze out a bunch of nuggets on cue, only to be told they weren’t the right size or shape or goddamn color. Now, three months after the win, I find myself a week away from flying to Los Angeles, California, part of the prize for the Anugerah Skrin. A week of Disneyland and Universal Studios, discount shopping outlets and the Malaysian Sambal Grill eatery. But not for me: I’ve made up my mind when I’ll be taking my little detours. The Guitar Center in Oxnard is one of them. So is the nearest Taco Bell, as well as White Castle and the International House Of Pancakes (which is a strange name considering the outlet is not really found internationally, but then again, none of the other countries take part in the World Series, so I guess it’s an American thing). Food. Goddamn food. Goddamn Colonel. I’m supposed to be on a diet, for God’s sake. I have grown at an exponential rate since the debacle in Egypt, where I first noticed the weight gain and took disgusting photos of my belly. That was also the first time I shat blood and began a crusade against a cow-headed goddess (we’ve since put our differences behind us). Now I can’t fit into most of my wardrobe, and the insides of my legs have little pimples that sore from time to time due to the skin of my legs rubbing against each other when I walk. The fat underneath my chin is growing larger, and being of Asian descent and not having much of a chin to begin with, this growth is making me look more and more like my face ends at the bottom of my throat. But, dammit, I love food to much. And once I land in the United States of America I intend to eat as many tacos, twinkies, square burgers and pancakes as I can fit in my mouth. That is, if I manage to get in. It’s not a good time to be a Muslim, especially not a traveling one. Before 9-11 I was still an ‘alien with a visa’, now I’m an ‘alien with a visa who may be on a jihad’. Hmmm… this may be too dangerous to post on-line. The FBI may have websites with the word ‘jihad’ flagged. They shouldn’t worry, though. I answered ‘no’ to the question ‘do you intend to enter the United States to perform acts of terrorism’ on my visa application. I answered the same to questions about being a prostitute, procurer of prostitutes and whether or not I have ever committed acts of genocide, so I must be a decent guy, right? After all, if I wasn’t, I’d have answered ‘yes’. Isn’t that what any self-respecting Nazi-terrorist-whore-pimp would do? They may be evil, but dammit, they sure are honest. The visa people even suspected my past trip to Egypt. “Where were you in Egypt,” they asked, “and what were you doing there?” “Checking out the pyramids, the nile, that kinda stuff,” was my reply. You didn’t seem to mind that I’d been to Australia, Thailand, England or Singapore. Hmmm… I wonder what would have happened if I had actually asked that? At least I have my visa now… although, like my previous one, I look Mexican in the photo again. How does this always happen? Why is it I always end looking not just different from my passport photo but also Mexican? On an American visa, of all things! But yes, I have my visa, and I’ll be buggering off to the United States of America with all the other winners of the Anugerah Skrin, which is almost a sure guarantee that I’ll be the most out-of-place-feeling-motherfucker there. At least Afdlin Shauki’s my roommate. I heard he smokes, which is a bonus. Then again, I’m about to enter a land where smoking is practically illegal. This should be interesting. And you know what else is interesting? It’s nineteen minutes to two on a Monday morning, and I still haven’t got the fucking energy or drive to start on my work. So here I am in another of my many places of hangy-outy-ness, typing away on my blog (which some have argued is simply an excuse to procrastinate over the work that I'm supposed to be doing). After this it's off to the studio to edit more Soundstage videos whilst also mixing down some music and attempting to write scripts. Ah, there's the rub. At the moment, I've been helping as a 'script doctor' of sorts for a friend of mine, the talented Rauf Fadzilla ('T-Fresh' in Ciplak), who's been working on some scripts. And whilst I find no problem whatsoever in pulling a hundred and one ideas out of my ass to help with his script, to work on any one of my own has become a chore of epic fucking proportions. I've got a sitcom idea I'm working on, possible telemovies, a short film and the answer to the eternal question of 'what movie are you gonna do next?'. And, apart from idea sheets, I haven't typed a single line of script. Grrr. Aargh. Ah, well. One must endeavour to keep on trying. Meanwhile, I take good shit. |
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See, back in the day I used to be into martial arts a LOT. Back when I was much younger, I used to do karate, kung fu and try out any other martial art that happened to be around.
Sat on the table next to me on this windy wet day outside Coffee Bean are two girls, probably between fifteen and eighteen. The one with braces is showing the one without how to smoke a cigarette.