on the dangers of tampering with yourself

whenever i saw the numerous ads for dieting pills, liposuction and plastic surgery, which fill up the frequent tv commmercial breaks in america (nearly every five minutes on basic cable), i was always reminded of this vivian stanshall timeless classic

Lonely, unmarried, looking for love,
Life was passing me by.
So I sent off my photo, hobbies and age;
Magazine marriage I tried.
They say for centuries lovely Japanese girls
Have been trained in the art of pleasing men.
Be lonely no more, open destiny's door.
For one dollar they arrange a meeting.

My image was wrong, I didn't like me,
So I changed my personality.
I bought a delux Merseybeat wig
But it was a size too big.
What confidence in my new built-up shoes,
So smart for winter or summer.
Undetectable in normal everyday use.

Look out there's a monster coming!

Bye-bye binoculars and macintosh,
Everything is just great.
I take elocution, learn to speak posh
But still I can't find a mate.
Be popular, learn to play the guitar,
In seven days you could be strumming.
Be sociable, learn kissing technique.

Look out there's a monster coming!

In my Carnaby clothes, I reshaped my nose,
Plastic surgery's best.
To cut down my weight off comes my left leg.
I pass a swimming costume test.
Are my sideboards too long,
Don't my aftershave pong?
I know my new nose ain't runnin'.
What's wrong with my tie?
Am I getting too high?

Look out there's a monster coming!

Disfiguring and ugly, my facial hair
I had removed electrically.
I rejuvenated my energy cells
And regained my virility (grunt grunt).
He put a hand on my heart,
He could change any part,
He had a machine for a mummy.
Please be gentle with me:
I come to pieces literally.

Look out there's a monster coming!
Look out there's a monster coming!
Look out there's a monster coming!

Look Out There's A Monster Coming - Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band:
Gorilla (1965)

chris morris & four boundary-stretching comedy shows

in the channel 4 programme 'the comedians' comedian', a list compiled by comedy writers and performers, i was glad to see that chris morris came out close to the top



i first saw him in 1994 in the brilliant bbc2 news spoof 'the day today' which was originally a radio 4 show, 'on the hour' - he co-wrote 'the day today' with, amongst others, graham linehan and arthur matthews who went on to do 'father ted' and 'big train' and contributed material to other morris shows, steve coogan, whose alan partridge character was first introduced as sports presenter on the show, and armando iannucci, who also produced the mary whitehouse experience and subsequent alan partridge shows and who has written and presented a lot of great satirical tv and radio shows (the most recent being 'time trumpet')



i think 'the day today' is the best parody of a news show i've seen - segments which stand out in my memory are the swimming pool documentary with steve coogan as the security guard reciting a long list of the years where no one died in the pool in a deadpan monotone, collately sisters' surreal financial reports featuring 'the currency arse', barbara wintergreen's grisly american news-style reports featuring death row criminals being executed in imaginative ways and chris morris' trendy hip mtv-style presenter's music reports, one of which plumbed the depths of bad taste by featuring a skeleton swinging backwards and forwards across the screen from a rope fastened around its neck declaring itself to be ian curtis and saying why he liked watching the show - all linked together by chris morris' anchorman holding forth like an over-the-top jeremy paxman




in 1997 he developed the news parody further with his channel 4 series 'brass eye', a spoof of news documentaries where again he played a variety of characters - this was the series where he famously duped celebrities into promoting made up campaigns (such as "Free the United Kingdom From Drugs" and "British Opposition to Metabolically Bisturbile Drugs" - the acronym of which comes out as F.U.K.D. & B.O.M.B.D.) or taking part in silly studio interviews which they thought were the real thing - his parody of pulp where he impersonates jarvis cocker singing a love song to moors murderer myra hindley is a classic



as is the 2001 paedophilia special which, at the time, registered more complaints in uk tv history than any other show in the days before before 'jerry springer: the opera', which now holds the record - it was fairly obvious morris was parodying the frenzied paranoia of the media which threw up the morally dodgy news of the world 'name and shame' campaign, the alarmingly thuggish and neanderthal reaction to this from a certain section of the population and the disturbing displays of uninformed mob-mentality which followed the publishing of the news of the world's list and photos



after the 'brass eye' series morris went back to radio, the medium in which he started as a dj in the late eighties, and made three series of comedy sketches for radio one called 'blue jam', which mixed surreal and disturbingly black comedy sketches with ambient music - a channel 4 late night tv version, 'jam', visually reinterpreted many of these audio sketches - the actors lipsynched their voices from the radio soundtrack and much of the material was shown in slow motion, giving the show a psychedelic drug-induced trip atmosphere - morris himself didn't play a big acting part in the show which i found disappointing, mainly restricting himself to the weird monologues which introduced each programme



he did take part in two memorable sketches, playing a dutch porn star discussing an unfortunate condition striking down his colleagues of unstoppable semen ejaculation resulting in death, and, as a witness to a suicide, he gives a detailed description of the death of a man who chooses to kill himself in a very unusual way



for me, 'jam' pushes the boundaries of comedy and taste more than any other tv sketch show i've ever watched - it's like a much darker version of 'big train', with which it shares a lot of its main actors



morris' most recent show, the channel 4 sitcom, 'nathan barley', was co-written with charlie brooker and was his first venture into situation comedy, satirising shallow media types whose talentless work is given status by and exposure through an internet and media obssessed society which is finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between over-hyped garbage and intelligent, meaningful journalism - for me the most interesting part of the series is watching the painful progress of one of the central characters, the frustrated writer dan, played by 'mighty boosh' star julian barratt - out of all the characters, he is the only one with any outward self-awareness - through an article he writes about the crass stupidity of his fellow media colleagues, referring to them as 'the idiots', he is unwittingly adopted as their spokesman and given the title of 'preacher man' because they are far too thick and self-involved to understand that they are 'the idiots' - dan's disillusionment with the world he shares with the idiots is not helped by his laziness which prevents him from doing anything constructive to extricate himself from this banal, vacuous, self-important society of non-entities, a society in which he often becomes a fully-fledged member through his own apathy - his failed escape attempt in a scene from the first episode, where he pleads with the boss of a glossy upmarket magazine to take him on is embarrassingly cringe-worthy in exactly the same way that many classic moments from ricky gervais' spoof documentary 'the office' were



the last show i saw chris morris in was earlier this year, the new graham linehan comedy on channel 4, the IT crowd, which was hilarious - he played a completely mad, overbearing managing director (is there any other kind?) of a large company who intimidates his workers in many entertaining ways, most notably by threatening to sack anyone who is stressed out by the end of the day and firing on the spot a complete department of people for not working well as a team - this is the first time he's acted in a show without any writing or directing responsibilities - i look forward enthusiastically to his next self-penned project - until then the dvds of 'the day today,' 'brass eye,' 'jam' and 'nathan barley' will have to suffice



relevant humourous links...

www.thesmokehammer.com - contains a great video of george bush's state of the union speech re-edited in a most amusing way

www.warprecords.com/bluejam/barguide/ - an interesting guide to non-existent bars in london

http://chilled.cream.org/forums/portal.php - a website with downloads of radio shows in which chris morris has been involved - the loose ends snippet and his 1993 rant about the launch of virgin radio are very funny

back at last

yes it happened last weekend

i have two vivid memories of the last month i spent here in 2004 when i was on my own and k. had been in london for four months by then, and i was living with my friend a. just off ulu pandan road - and if you're reading this anna, it has left me with some happy memories of those last months - apart from my brief melodramatic evening when i reacted badly to those anti-biotics that arsehole doctor gave me on the night we were supposed to be seeing the eagles - you remember the moment when you peered over at me as i shivered and panicked on the couch and said in a slightly louder than normal and slower voice, 'do you think you're having a heart attack?' and i wimpered and whinged and generally carried on like a hammy actor in a death scene

actually i should have said three vivid memories as the aforementioned one was certainly that in a kind of cringingly embarrassing way

both these memories are fairly ordinary occurences and seem quite mundane when i try to put them down into words

i remember late one sunday night walking down from tantric to maxwell food court and, after an early morning supper, i needed to go to the atm opposite to get some money for a taxi back to pandan valley - it was one of those balmy still nights with an occasional breath of warm tropical breeze - i walked across south bridge road towards the hdb blocks and past the big area of grass that was still there at that time but now houses what appears to be a massive chinese temple - even in the early hours of the morning there was activity and life all around me - people sitting in the coffee shops, people outside playing drafts or chess, people hurrying to and fro - and i remember how good it felt to be living in a place like this where there was always life going on at any time of the day or night and how i would miss it when i was shivering in the grip of a wet and cold london winter where everything shuts down after 5.30pm and it feels too cold to walk the streets after dark and you always feel in a slight state of peril, worrying that you might be mugged or accosted by thugs for no other reason than that they're looking for trouble - the latter did actually happen to me one horrible night in 1994 while coming out of my local station and walking to my flat

the second thing i remember was driving in a taxi on my way to work one sunday morning - it was that part of the ECP which, heading east, slopes up and looks out across the water to fullerton one and the cityscape with the vomiting merlion to the right-hand side - it was a view i saw five times a week coming from the direction of pandan valley - that morning i was plugged in to my creative muvo and listening for the umpteenth time to the new R.E.M. album - the outsiders, one of my favourite tracks was playing as i looked out at this view and a familiar tingling sensation ran up my back as i thought what a great place i had been living in for nearly a decade

i suppose these were two of my goodbye moments - i was taking my temporary leave and, at the time, although i knew i'd be coming back, i didn't know how long we were going to be away - i'd spent most of my thirties here give or take a few months on either end, and it had, at the time, been the best decade of my life - it's strange that i should have left a city in my own country which is in many ways freer and more open, to start living what turned out a much more fulfilling and happier life in a city on the other side of the world which had such a nanny-state, uptight reputation - usually people do it the other way round

back to last sunday - i'm now working back in the same building i spent 2004 working in and, from the gallery hotel, taking half of the same route there - so i found myself driving up the ECP with the outsiders playing once again (this time on my ipod) as i looked across at the same cityscape - that was when it hit me - after nearly two weeks of feeling strangely displaced and not quite part of where i was, i realised, with that same tingly sensation, that i was back and i was very happy - singapore has crept back under my skin over the last two weeks and i've finally chilled out and achieved, if not quite the same zen-like disposition i'd had before i left last time, a more laid-back one

and after five months of wanderings, i'm beginning to feel settled and anchored again

a word from our sponsor

the perils of ambiguity

i just did a wiki on tampines and was rather alarmed to find this...

'It tends to be even more dense than other housing districts.'

i have to say that after spending a week doing promotional language shows in tampines mall a few years ago, i found the people there just as intelligent as anywhere else in singapore

expectations

so this is it - the first time i've ever returned to a place i came to feel was home after just over two years of being away

i thought i would get rather emotional and reminiscent (k. tells me it's a failing of mine, this tendency to keep looking backwards - it's a cultural thing - brits are like that - just look at the amount of nostalgia shows on uk tv schedules) - i thought when i came through those airport exit doors, got in a taxi and drove down the ecp to robertson quay, i would be welling up and i'd feel tingly goosebumps travelling up my spine to the back of my head

however, after a twelve hour journey following a rather fraught time before i left sydney when i got to the airport, laden with my wordly possessions, and realised i'd left both my passport and ticket back in north sydney on the desk in our apartment, i was very tired and grumpy when i emerged into the half-forgotten heat and humidity of a tropical country, the sweatiness and closeness of the air making me even grumpier - fuck, how could i have forgotten this, i chastised myself

after a restless night of only three hours sleep i caught a taxi to parkway parade to make lesson preparations for my first weekend of teaching with my grumpy factor receding but still nagging away at me - it was a strange feeling - not at all how i thought i'd feel - here i was doing my usual route to work, about to start teaching for the same company for which i'd worked for nine years before with virtually my same timetable - it was as if the last two years hadn't happened - it was weird

i had a very chatty taxi driver who filled me in on some of the changes - apparently that big hole in the middle of the nicoll highway has been filled in, there's a new shopping area called vivo city, or something like that anyway, which has opened up somewhere near the waterfront somewhere or other - there's a golf course on that reclaimed land near fort road, replacing an illegal activity in that area with a more respectable legal one, but still mainly engaged in by men and requiring as much walking and standing around under trees, near bushes and in the open as the previous activity did (and, like the previous activity you're still trying to get a hole in one and coming away frustrated that, after several attempts your aim has been unsuccessful, even though you've had plenty of practice at handling your club) - a tunnel is being constructed from fort road to somewhere near tampines (always one of my favourite percussion instruments in an orchestra) - various buildings have gone up since i was last here and large areas of the city still look like major construction sites (so no change there) - clarke quay is now the buzzing place to be, whereas when i was last here it was boat quay that was the busier of the two and was the one with all the annoying drunken expats - the wankers (sorry, merchant bankers) who work in the financial companies and banks and have all the social finesse of a dog turd

what did strike me as i drove around over the next few days was how much more claustrophobic it all feels - i'm not sure if this is because once wide open spaces around the centre of the city have now got large buildings on them or whether it's due to the fact that we lived in a city of low rise buildings for two years, we have been living in a sydney apartment with a wide sweeping view across to a clear horizon and, of course before that, we were living in and travelling around the states where the wide open spaces seem unlimited and there is no shortage of land for one storey housing estates to keep sprawling into

so for the last few days it's all seemed unreal and unsettling to be back here again and at odds with the last two years which i've spent looking forward to k. and i picking up our singapore lives from where we left off

and then it happened on sunday morning

a new experience

i'd come to believe that at the age of forty-one i'd probably run out of new experiences or rites of passage - they become fewer and far between as the years pass by at an alarmingly ever-increasing speed

like all of my peers i've been through most of the major ones, which i list in chronological order - sex, passing a driving test (after the second attempt), leaving home, college, the insanitary horror that is a major rock festival, discovering the joys of illegal substances, traipsing round europe with a heavy backpack and staying in accommodation that even ray mears would think twice about, getting a job, starting a new life in another country, sharing a long-term relationship, the realisation that you haven't the faintest idea which party to vote for in a general election (that inane, grinning tory masquerading as the saviour of the labour party or that smarmy, vomit-inducing, smug bastard now leading that bunch of wankers otherwise known as the conservative party) and, that despite the socialist sympathies of your formative years, you've turned into a possession-loving capitalist with conservative tendencies (conservative with a small 'c') like the rest of the class of society of which, to your horror, you have become a member by virtue of your profession, and, even more upsetting, the realisation that you've been this same person for your whole adult life and have just been kidding yourself for all these years....etc

so imagine my surprise now i find myself living through a completely new and fresh experience which, now it's here and will soon be gone, i will never have again

well, i'm finally going back...

On a little street in Singapore,
We'd meet beside a lotus-covered door,
A veil of moonlight on her lonely face,
How pale the hands that held me in embrace.
My sails tonight are filled with perfume of Shalimar,
And temple bells will guide me to the shore.
And then I'll hold her in my arms, and love the way I loved before,
On a little street in Singapore.

Lyrics by: Billy Hill
Music by: Peter De Rose
With Harry James and his Orchestra
Arranged by: Andy Gibson
Label: Columbia Records
Recorded: October 13, 1939

We sail tonight for Singapore
We're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny moor
Took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen
Walked the sewers of Paris
I danced along a colored wind
Dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me

We sail tonight for Singapore
Don't fall asleep while you're ashore
Cross your heart and hope to die
When you hear the children cry.
Let marrow bone and cleaver choose
While making feet for children shoes
Through the alley
Back from Hell
When you hear that steeple bell
You must say goodbye to me.

Wipe him down with gasoline
Till his arms are hard and mean,
From now on boys this iron boat's your home
So heave away boys.

We sail tonight for Singapore
Take your blankets from the floor
Wash your mouth out by the door
The whole town's made of iron ore
Every witness turns to steam
They all become Italian dreams
Fill your pockets up with earth
Get yourself a dollar's worth
Away boys, away, boys, heave away

The captain is a one-armed dwarf
He's throwing dice along the wharf
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King
So take this ring

We sail tonight for Singapore
We're all as mad as hatters here
I've fallen for a tawny moor
Took off to the land of Nod
Drank with all the Chinamen
Walked the sewers of Paris
I danced along a colored wind
Dangled from a rope of sand
You must say goodbye to me

Singapore - Tom Waits:
Rain Dogs: 1985