Scent of a Half-Man

My Palm Oil column for Coconuts ... in which I say thanks but no thanks to Eau De Upstart by Mario Maurer, especially when flying the cheapskate skies with Air Asia http://bangkok.coconuts.co/2014/07/02/palm-oil-thai-scents-

SUPER MARIO WANTS IT ALL                  ... Insta-Art © Jason Gagliardi

I regularly get to endure the utterly joyless experience that is flying on Air Asia, from the “be here early or we'll leave without you” check-in and stale, overpriced sandwiches for sale to the schizophrenic policy on whether beer can be obtained in-flight.

These indignities were amplified on a recent trip when I glanced up at the garish advertising splashed all the way down the overhead lockers to see repeated entreaties stretched out to vanishing point suggesting I would be an imbecile not to immediately douse myself in the new signature scent of Mario Maurer, the recently ubiquitous, Thai-German, actor-model-whatever du jour.

Now I am not against advertising, although I can advise against its practice having spent some time in its iniquitous clutches. Nor am I against men's perfumes or the branding thereof by assorted fashionistas and celebrities, or the idea of celebrity endorsements (although I believe they should be used sparingly and not gratuitously and above all authentically – otherwise you are left with Tiger Woods shilling Buicks).

Hell, I'm not even against Mario Maurer, as long as he keeps his sickeningly pretty face and his abs of steel in movies for lovesick teenagers and in the pages of teen and gay magazines and not hovering above me in Warholesque repetition, pouting, importuning his captive audience of hapless travelers cooped up in their tin can with wings for hours. And then there's the risible “hero shot” “of Maurer astride his thundering motorcycle, looking about as tough as wet tissue, a “Wild Hog” in waiting.
Mario Maurer for Him.

I mean, give me a break. The dude is a boy. How can you expect to credibly endorse aftershave when you look like you don't even shave yet?

A Towering Pile of Utter Nonsense: Condominium Branding

In which I take aim at the symphony of silliness that surrounds the naming and branding of Asia's throw-em-up, flog-em-off condominiums. The original column for Coconuts is here: http://singapore.coconuts.co/2014/06/17/palm-oil-whats-condo-name

LE C'ORB VERSUS THE FRENDY                      Insta-Art © Jason Gagliardi

My secret theory on the naming of brands, especially the vexed pseudo-science and one-handed greasy pole climb that is the conundrum known as condominium naming, is simply this: The best name is one that has been chosen.

I say this having spent more time dreaming up condominium names and taglines and the rest of the branding babble than any sane man ought reasonably to admit. Six years navigating the high-gloss reflections and shifting sands of adland was enough to give me an enduring cynicism about the seemingly simple task of buttressing bricks and mortar with brand architecture.

It goes like this: Having won the pitch, the triumphant agency sends in the big guns to kick things off with the client (thereafter they may send in the clowns, but I digress).

The client is the project's developer but also, you are about to find out, an instant expert in all matters architectural, design, brand, marketing, sales, style, fashion and cranial nano-surgery. Despite, or perhaps because of all this expertise and intelligence, the client will reject all the first round of names. And then the second. And the third. And the fourth.

Unless you are Clint Eastwood or a call girl penning her memoirs, not having a name is a bad thing. In property, it's suicide. Without a moniker, lacking a crisp appellation that buttresses the brand values while fitting the target market like a Hugo Boss suit, the smartest structure remains ephemeral and amorphous, a chimera skittering on the skyline.

Hazy Memories of Hong Kong Press Freedom

My column for Coconuts.co is called Palm Oil. It's bad for you but you might find yourself drawn back like a dog to it's vomit. Suck it and see. Originally ran here: http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2014/05/28/palm-oil-hazy-memories-hong-kongs-press-freedom

HK PRESS NO LONGER IN FIRST FLUSH OF SUCCESS   Insta-Art © Jason Gagliardi

It must have been early December of 1996, although memories are hazy when it comes to the liver-shrivelling raving-loony fin-de-siecle days that marked the existence of a journalist in Hong Kong to cover the big story, Britain's looming colonial garage sale – or shotgun divorce.

My editor at Postmagazine, the glossy weekend read of South China Morning Post, where I had landed as senior writer and columnist, swished past my desk then stopped, turned and fixed my bloodshot, bleary eyes with her perfectly kohled laser gaze.

“Gaggers, something funny for the Christmas issue please. And I want a handover angle.”I scratched my head for a few minutes, gazed out the window for a few more, made myself a tepid instant coffee and chewed on my pen. A funny Christmas handover story, eh? As if they grew on trees.

With an almost audible 'clunk', the idea dropped fully-formed into my skull – no doubt the same one that has saved countless clueless feature writers staring down a 'silly season' blank page from a Christmas stuffing or the rough end of a humbug.

I would parody 'A Visit from St Nicholas', Clement Clarke-Moore's marzipan-dripping, good cheer-laced slice of festive doggerel that famously begins 'Twas the night before Christmas.'

In my version, the night before Christmas would be spent with Hong Kong's last Governor, Chris 'Fat Panda' Patten and Jiang Zemin, China's Brylcreemed supremo that was.

Full of zeal and hopeful of being in the pub by lunchtime, I bashed the thing out in short order –a silly flight of fancy which lurched from satire to surrealism to scatology, and ended with the Chinese leader
in his Rococo rest room, urinating from a great height on his imagined enemies and Colonial running dogs while pining for his 'Precious', namely, Hong Kong. I do more or less remember the final lines, which ran:

And as Jiang bestraddled his gilt-covered cistern,
He shouted to no-one: 'One Country, One System!'

Gangs of Bangkok in Primary Colours

I was mildly worried I might have overstepped the mark with this visual at the height of the latest coup, mid-curfew, but it was alright on the night. It's basically just a plea for us all to get along, while enjoying musicals and Korean novelty acts. Read the original Palm Oil column for Coconuts.co here: http://bangkok.coconuts.co/2014/06/04/palm-oil-flash-mobbed-gangs-bangkok

MAFIA, I'VE JUST MET A GIRL NAMED MAFIA ...    Insta-Art © Jason Gagliardi

“When you're a Jet, you're a Jet all the way 
From your first cigarette to your last dying day”
- West Side Story

“You have never been in love, until you've seen the sunlight thrown over smashed human bone” - Morrissey  

Here is an interesting fact you might not know: the English term "mob," which has now become an honorary Thai word by dint of repetition and its monosyllabic allure, comes from the Latin phrase mobile vulgus, or “the fickle crowd.”

Mobile vulgus. It sounds more like the scientific classification for a particularly obnoxious, pimply and aggressive sub-species of adolescent to be found roaming the teenage wastelands of nocturnal Bangkok. The sort of yaba-smoking, engine-revving, gun-toting, gang-banging, Line-sticker-sending sext-pests and Darwin Award recipients-in-waiting you might find in the cinderblock tenements of Din Daeng or the drug-ravaged shantytowns of Khlong Toey or the bling-bling clubs of Ekkamai.

You can almost hear the David Attenborough narration: “Ah yes, and now we see mobile vulgus in his natural habitat. Observe the gaudy plumage, which the male uses to attract the opposite sex and appear larger and more intimidating to his enemies. If we are lucky, we might even see a flock of them perform their mating dance. Aeons have passed since the first caveman speared his neighbour, stole his dinosaur steak and clubbed his wife, and yet, seemingly, no time at all...”

The sort of misspent youth and wasted young who could put the “gang” in Gangnam Style. Oh, wait. They already did. Ekkamai, home of the Eastern Bus Terminal, went West Side Story in 2012 when two gangs dining in the same restaurant began to taunt and challenge each other with increasingly aggressive versions of South Korean pop blob Psy's smash hit.

Singapore Nightlife is Better than Bangkok's

Here's my second Palm Oil column for Coconuts which appeared here: http://singapore.coconuts.co/2014/05/21/palm-oil-singapores-nightlife-better-bangkoks 

ZOUK-OUT ZOMBIES ATTACK BANGKOK                                     Insta-Art © Jason Gagliardi

My first night out in Bangkok saw me sucked into the maw of the original Thermae, the all-night low-life last-ditch speakeasy of Sukhumvit Road. It was the second night of three without sleep (the last spent careening into ditches and trees as my mate dozed and nodded at the wheel of our jeep on the way to the most remote beaches of Koh Phangan and our first Full Moon Party; the first, saucer eyed at a rave party in Hong Kong) and a suitably surreal haze surrounded proceedings.

I popped my Singapore nightlife cherry around the same time, perhaps even in the same year, back in the misty mid-1990s. While I have no idea where the evening began or which hotels, bars, clubs and other establishments were traversed, I distinctly remember ending up at Top Ten, atop the Four Floors of Whores, as Orchard Towers is famously known.

Two maniacal grinning brothers, bald Thai twins, were the DJs at Top Ten and they played the ubiquitous commercial pan-Asian grating disco-house of the day very loud, and very fast. Super Maniac Bros. had heavy smoke machine trigger fingers, and near white outs were common. Through this swirling laser maelstrom, a great whirring and grinding of gears would periodically announce the descent of the Top Ten mascot, a Kafka-esque red-eyed nightmare insect which would drop from its ceiling lair to twitch for a spell above the teeming dance floor.

Both places were packed with mostly young (mostly) women; office girls making rent, maids making whoopee, hardened hookers with thousand-baht stares, rogue ladyboys, and the occasional throwback to the Vietnam War era, when both establishments were born and began swinging. Each is an enduring emblem of its city's nocturnal extremes; the infrared of the nightlife spectrum, occasionally ultra-violent.