1. BOOK FLOP
(Note: Some names have been changed to protect the identities of the celebrities and non-celebrities who feature in the outrageously embellished diatribe that follows)
Monthly meetings of the Bangkok book club – whose name must remain secret – to which I belong are not for the thin-skinned.
Insults are hurled, feelings are hurt, outfits are ridiculed, characters assassinated. And those are its good points.
Wine is guzzled by the goblet-full, food is consumed, shoved aside or hurled across dining room tables amid shouting, laughter, lewd language and occasional mental breakdowns.
Among some of the more memorable comments I can recall over the 8 years in which I’ve been privileged to be among this extroverted, intelligent, bunch of rat-bags, are:
-- EDGAR: I see you’ve gone for the lamp-lit look Craig, what a shame it doesn’t quite gel.
-- COLETTE: I vote we cancel our sponsorship of the impoverished slum children and redirect our charity fund into climate change.
-- FYODOR: Well done Emily for being the only one amongst us to embrace the theme and come dressed as a Dickens character. EMILY: I didn’t.
-- DANIELLE: Truman if you EVER choose a book this ridiculous again, I will blow up your apartment and smash your antique horse-head collection to pieces.
-- VIRGINIA: Why is Agatha wearing a tablecloth?
-- OSCAR: Everyone, can we all please shut the fuck up for a couple of minutes? The fondue seems to have caught fire, and
-- CHARLOTTE: As the only one in this group to have been possessed by the devil, I think I have more authority to comment on the book than the rest of you.
It’s all meant in good fun of course, but some people, especially newcomers, don’t always grasp this and flee their first meeting terrified and teary, their self-esteem in tatters, their lives in ruins.
The selection process for this elite club, which features many high-profile media types, is rigorous. Each possible new member is trialled for 3 months, then must perform a musical, dance, mime, acrobatic or instrumental number to the satisfaction of the others – I am quite serious – before getting the go ahead, or not, through a very loud secret ballot process.
We even have an awards ceremony at the end of each year, or cycle, as we call it, for the best and worst books.
My track record has been mixed.
Actually, that’s not quite true. My books, with one exception, have usually finished near the bottom of the pile, but I’ve only won the wooden spoon once, despite the dismaying assumption among the others that I have walked away with it every year.
This year I chose an “adult ghost story” called Dark Matter, which I initially thought was a good choice.
Mid-way through reading it, my confidence began to wane and by the end I was absolutely beside myself, knowing I was going to be annihilated at my meeting, held in my lamp-lit apartment last week.
To be sure, it wasn’t a total disaster. One or two members were kind enough to say “it was okay,” two actually liked it – I had paid them off in advance with cash, gift-certificates and lavish designer gowns – and the rest hated it, so it wasn’t quite as bad as I’d expected.
And unlike some of our recent meetings, no-one left in tears, nothing was smashed, and it didn’t degenerate into a tirade of alcoholic abuse that some members – and I admit I’ve often been among the main culprits – have sometimes provoked.
So who are these outlandish, outspoken, overly critical people, you may well ask?
As I say, their identities must remain a secret, else we’ll be stalked by the tabloids and bombarded with 76,000 audition tapes from wannabes desperate to join this A-list cult, I mean club.
But I can divulge this: They are my best friends, and while they may ridicule my taste in wall-hangings, laugh at my placemats and throw my books off the balcony, I know they’d be the first folk to race to my assistance should disaster befall me, and I them. We’re all mad in a fabulous Bangkok way and I love them for that.
2. DIVA DISCOVERY
When my gorgeous friend Emma – who is not a book club member – emailed me demanding I check out “Lana Del Rey,’ I thought she was talking about a new drag queen.
I mean, come on, the name is right up their with Pauline Pantsdown, Pussy Tourette, Mitzy Galore and Charisma Belle (some of whom I actually know from my Sydney days).
But unlike me, Emma is at the forefront of emerging new artists. She’s turned me onto Florence and the Machine and various others whose names momentarily escape me.
So I jumped onto YouTube and checked her out.
I didn’t warm to her at first. The songs sounded a bit bland and the videos were grainy, I thought. Plus she looked like Angelina Jolie with an even worse collagen disfigurement.
Suffice to say it wasn’t the love-at-first-listen experience I’d had with Adele, Amy Winehouse and the divine Lady GaGa.
But the recommendations kept coming so I persevered.
Slowly the songs started to grow on me, but still “something’s missing,” I thought, “something I can’t quite put my finger on.”
Then BINGO! Last week my great mate Stu, who, like Emma, has been the source of many musical discoveries, which I then shamelessly claim as my own, sent me the “Penguin Prison Remixes” of Blue Jeans and Off to the Races.
Or course, that’s what was missing. The gay dance beat! My “people’ need a good remixed soaring dance beat if we’re to pay the slightest attention to new musical artists.
Now of course I think Ms. Del Rey is the greatest thing since hand-painted fridge magnets.
And despite “mixed reviews’ on Saturday Night Live, her first live television appearance, I will be lining up when her debut album Born to Die hits the stores here in Bangkok next week.
Oh Craig, Craig, Craig what a stupid, outdated thing to say. There are no stores anymore, so I’ll finally have to learn how to download!
Lana is set to be the next big female star, and, thanks to the Penguin Prison Remix team – who also do a great version of Kylie’s Get Outta My Way – will soon go stratospheric on the gay dance scene here in Big Bad Bangkok. I can only hope, though, superficial dance man that I am, that every track will be re-mixed.
So, there you go. That’s my prediction. And remember, you heard it here first.
3. FAREWELL TO A FRIEND
My colleague and friend Rob Killorn is leaving the company we work for next week to pursue some freelance projects.
I will miss him.
Over the past seven years Rob, who is a talented cameraman and editor, and I have been to more countries, traveled tens of thousands of kilometers in various hellholes and spent more tedious hours waiting at airports together than most people would manage in a lifetime.
We have stood on the highest mountain in Tajikistan, waded our way through stinking Cambodian prisons, suffered weeks of shared hell filming with carriage-loads of Communist cadres and hangers-on while working in Vietnam and China, sped through the Gobi desert, got absolutely shit-faced drunk -- albeit under strict supervision -- on vodka in various pariah states including Uzbekistan, eaten some of the worst meals imaginable, gone though shipping container-loads of Imodium, aspirin, granola bars and valium, hidden in vans waiting to chase wildlife smugglers in Thailand, stood thigh-high in garbage filming slums in Calcutta, Manila and many places most people will never see, interviewed homeless people, those living with HIV, those living on under a dollar a day and those whose buffalos, bulls, barking dogs and other uncooperative beasts we were trying to film took an instant dislike to us and began charging towards us, sending us hurtling down hills, slipping in slime or tumbling backwards in cow dung or chicken shit.
Most recently we were in Bangladesh together, but over the years we’ve been on forays to more than 15 countries and spent hundreds of hours, including numerous all-nighters, in a darkened suite editing the footage from our adventures, arguing, laughing in delight at our genius or weeping in despair when it all went wrong.
I’ve traveled with many cameramen over the years, but Rob is among the calmest and most easy going.
Nothing phases him, or on the rare occasion when something does – and let’s face it, working in some of these places can try the patience of a saint – I am able to help him through it, so I hope.
He also knows when to spring to my assistance, most notably at airports – which I’ve grown to despise – and which tend to turn me into Hannibal Lecter or Faye Dunaway in Mommy Dearest.
He’s stopped me from slapping customs officials, prevented me from mowing down entire families -- who have pushed in front of me – with my trolley – and has known exactly when to order me a calming beer or red wine when he suspects I’m about to unravel.
Rob is staying in Bangkok and I will obviously continue to see him.
But I wanted to bid him adieu and wish him all the best in whatever endeavors he chooses to pursue.
We have had our ups and downs over the years, but we have shared some amazing, bizarre, odd, crazy and kooky adventures. And what fun they have been. Cheers mate!
Photo: Rob and Craig, Azerbaijan, July 2011
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