25% of 44 is 11

First, let me thank EVERYONE for the birthday wishes. I really appreciate them and I am glad to have to admit to myself that I am not a social hyena, as my mother always used to say.

By way of gratitude, I figured I would do for you what you seem to like best; give you a big, honking blog entry with lots of vitriol and humor. It’s the least I can do, because in addition to being so flattered by all the birthday wishes I am really flattered that people read my bilious rantings. So here’s a…  well, you’ll read it in the Epilogue.

If I have any regrets about today, it is simply that I didn’t fulfill some people’s exhortations for birthday behavīor of a salacious nature.

Frankly, I’m 44, it’s a Monday, and I don’t drink, dance,  or play crotch hockey with ‘professional skaters’ (or amateurs… Dammit).

At the end of this week, I’m going on a boat trip with some friends, many of whom are female and will very likely be wearing bathing suits.

I, on the other hand, will not be. I’m so pale I’m translucent, and my mother almost died of skin cancer. So I will not be hanging out in the sun.

I’ll probably just milk the entertainment factor and  be dressed like Marlon Brando in The Island of Dr. Moreau:

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Know how some people, like lifeguards, put that white stuff on their nose? Well, Brando knows that’s not the only place it goes.

“Bring me the cocoa butter…”

Name that reference and I’ll buy you lunch.

Let my willingness to risk my life stand as evidence of how much I either a) crave human interaction or b) want to see some of my female friends in bathing suits.

So this impending bit of socializing has helped alleviate any urge to make my birthday pruriently memorable.

And given me a reason to put up photos from one of my favorite bad movies of all time.

Speaking of which, there is also a plan afoot to have myself and Joman Chiang in the same room for dinner (with friends/witnesses) sometime in the next two weeks. Ms. Chiang is the only redeeming thing about Dead Slowly, one of my leastfavorite bad films and the impetus for one of my most lengthy and vituperative reviews.

So I have that going for me.

Of course, she’s approximately half my age, so I know better than to delude myself.

Such age factors are important for me to discuss my birthday today. Because I went to see a movie today.

With a girl.

Who’s approximately one quarter my age.

Yes, today I took my long-term movie partner and all-around good kid Vickie to the movies.

I had taken her to the movies on my birthday before (we saw Ratatouille), and it had been a while since we  saw a movie together, so I wanted to spend my birthday with her.

I had told her mother that the choice had boiled down to either Toy Story 3 or Predators.

Obviously, I was kidding.

After all, I had already seen Predators.

Hardly a contender for best picture, it nevertheless entertained me, and that’s all I was really looking for.

Don’t get me wrong, there were some glaring gaffes. The biggest (pun intended) was Laurence Fishburne, whose character scavenged whatever he could find in order to survive on the planet.

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“Scrounging is my business. And business is good.”

Obviously the USS Burger Kingcrashed on the planet with full cargo bays.

But the film did have, for me, at least one must-buy-DVD redeeming moment. I won’t spoil it, but I will say it is a line of dialogue from the prison inmate.

Actually, I guess it’s two lines. The first has to do with his primary goal when he gets back to earth (his secondary goal I could do without).

But the prize line comes when he attacks a predator. I was rolling in my chair so much I almost fell out of the seat.

I was, of course, the only person laughing at this line, but so what? I’m used to having that happen when I watch Hollywood films in Hong Kong theatres.

I also liked the film’s ending which, while solidly laying the groundwork for the sequel, also managed to be pretty raw and bleak.

So obviously my telling Vickie’s mom that Predatorswas an option is a joke. I wouldn’t have taken her even if her mom said yes.

We went to see Toy Story 3, which, believe me, is NOT a kid’s film. It’s a dark, scary story about how people (real or otherwise) can be sh*tty to one another. It’s frightening, mean, and creepy, and even slightly racist.

But Walt Disney is Satan, so what the f@#$ can we expect? I honestly thought of the Bible when I saw the Disney logo on the front end of the film:

*****I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.*

I’m kidding, but then again, I’m not. People’s adulation of all things Disney borders on the blasphemous.

F@#$ Walt Disney.

The Lion King is nothing but an animated remake of Birth of a Nation. Don’t laugh; it ain’t funny and I ain’t joking. Read both synopses.

Should have called that piece of sh*t Plantasia.

How can Americancartoons always have kings and queens?

Where’s my motherf@#$ing democracy?

Or did we drop all of it on Iraq?

My mother used to say she felt bad that she never took my sister and I to Disney World. I told her not to worry, I wouldn’t have wanted to go.

Even at the age of eight, I found Mickey Mouse to be creepy on a pedophile level.

It was all too… perfect. Too nice. Too fake.

I could relateto Bugs Bunny. I had relativeslike Bugs Bunny. And Daffy Duck. They were real to me. They were funny.

But thanks to Toy Story 3, Disney touched the kids in the cinema.

Inappropriately.

With Toy Story 3, Disney terrified and traumatized children. I heard a lot of kids crying in the theater.

I admit, I enjoyed that, but Walt Disney is still a doucheb@g.

I don’t even havekids and I’m offended by this movie. It wasn’t fun. It was creepy.

At least Predatorswould have been more light-hearted.

Vickie is funny, because she’s nearly 11 and an amazingly bright kid, and is past the age of reason such that she can talk about when we first started going to the movies, and I can explain to her that I used to be afraid that she would become afraid of something in the movie, which she of course now assures me would never happen.

Because she’s so much older.

Of course, in mathematical terms, she’s right. She’s 100% older. Twice as old.

Too old to scare, apparently.

I got two words for her:

Saw 7.

But never mind that.

My point here (I think) is that I spent a quiet birthday with people I cared about and had a lot of fun.

My other point is that Walt Disney is f@#$ing Satan and I’m glad he’s dead.

That’s a point I made on the phone in the MTR (yes, I broke that new law…) to Ben Lo, who called me to wish me happy birthday and sing me the birthday song.

He does the most remarkable impression of Marilyn Monroe singing. It was hair-raising. For a lot of reasons.

But it was really nice to get the call. We talked about something that may get done in the future and generally just had fun making each other laugh, usually at the Hong Kong entertainment industry’s expense.

Oooh, that reminds me. Last week, I ‘teched’ for Dear Jane at Hitec Hall in Kowloon Bay for their ‘co-headline’ (scare quotes for sarcasm) gig with Fiona Sit, a woman whose ‘singing’ (!) makes you think that her last name is missing a letter. I didn’t play guitar, I just helped Howie with his guitars. Even that bit of philanthropy set me at odds with an industry and ‘professionals’ who desperately need to hire a Pornographic Detective so they might get a f@#$ing clue.

But this one short anecdote illustrates a lot of what’s wrong with the HK industry and just how it is wrong.

In a bald-faced grab for street cred, Fiona did the Lily Allen song whose title is profane and whose lyrics are an indictment of people who have closed minds. The title/chorus expresses Ms. Allen’s feelings directly and simply.

Well, because one word in the title started with F, there was a problem. Fiona didn’t want to offend her sponsors.

God f@#$ing forbid, right?

So this confrontational song with social relevance became “ KickYou Very Much.”

And it sucked as much (corporate) c*ck as you can imagine for grammatical, musical, social, and other reasons.

But look on the bright side.

It’s really just one more reason why Shandy Chin is 1,000,000 times cooler (and 5,000,000 times prettier) than Fiona could ever dream of being:

Just for today, I don’t mind if Shandy thinks that about Fiona instead of me…

This rant is actually very much a part of what Ben and I were discussing today; you can’t put a price on integrity, because the instance you do it ceases to beintegrity.

I’ll finish off with this AnD-centric concept that chronologically belongs earlier in the entry but it would have screwed up some pretty good transitions if I did so.

One more reason I am not disappointed by today’s Category 1/Rated G festivities is because I will go to the Red Bull Music Academy On the Floorat the W Hotel’s Wet Pool Deck + Living Room.

I’m not normally into pool parties, but let’s look at the Facebook invitation I got:

Oh, Isee.

A pool party with Gloriana Wong and Angie Ngpossibly in attendance, and at least 19 (assuming a 50/50 male-female split) other chances for similar gorgeousity.

That may be the greatest persuasive sentence ever.

If Gloriana Wong and Angie Ng were invited to an event at Disney Land, I’d go.

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Thank you again for all my birthday wishes. I’ll have another  gift for all of you this week: I’m going to see The Jade and the Pearl/ 翡翠明珠.

And then I’ll review it.

Really hard.

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Epilogue:

I love when life and art get twisted together. At the start of this entry, I wanted to find a specific term to use. It would be the antithesis of a ‘hamster pop,’ which is a term used in pornography to describe a very small ‘money shot.’

That’s why I wrote “Well, here’s a…” I was looking for the opposite term. Except I couldn’t find it.

But I found something better…

I was looking up ‘hamster pop,’ and the Urban Dictionary sent me to the wrong page. For some reason it wanted to find hamster face, but that doesn’t exist, so it went to babboon face.

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Read the italicized example.

I love you, God.