Musical interlude

Here's a little thing I threw together ... funky house and breakbeat, with some new tunes and some classics

http://soundcloud.com/djlovehandles/ilovefunkyhandles

YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MANY LOVE HANDLES

Trout masks and beef hearts

The South China Morning Post has come up with an excellent wheeze for its Sunday pages: a column called Rewind, in which a classic movie, album and book, all of which tie into a theme, are reviewed. Here is my first contribution to the column, a scary encounter with Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica, for a Rewind themed around madness.

WARNING: MAY CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE
IF TAKEN IN LARGE DOSES

When Tom Waits leaps into print to give you props for bringing the crazy, you know you’ve reached some transcendental level of lunacy. Not that anyone would have dared to tell the late and very large Captain Beefheart, who once pushed his drummer down the stairs for refusing to "play a strawberry", that he was nuts.
    Madness and genius have been inextricably linked down through the ages, not least in the arts, and most especially in music. You have to be a hamper short of a picnic, the thinking goes, to get synapses short-circuiting to produce bursts of pure creativity. But there’s music by tortured geniuses and sad broken poets, and then there’s Trout Mask Replica by Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band (Straight) 1969. This is some seriously nutty stuff from a real whack job. Listen to it too often, or for too long at once, and you might begin to call your own mental health into question.
    Warns Waits: "The roughest diamond in the mine, his musical inventions are made of bone and mud. Enter the strange matrix of his mind and lose yours." The song titles alone gave me pause: Dachau Blues. Hair Pie Bake 1. Pachuco Cadaver. China Pig. Ant Man Bee. Neon Meate Dream of A Octafish. Only a madman, or someone trying to impersonate one, could cough up such frothing nonsense. As a Beefheart neophyte, I felt nervous. What if I didn’t get it? Worse, what if I did? Anyway, I sonically tip-toed past the point of no return and realized with relief that anyone who claims to ‘get it’ is a big fat bare-faced hipster-wannabe liar. You can’t ‘get’ this level of virtuoso deranged chaos any more than you can ‘get’ a tornado or a serial killer. You can only stand back, knock-kneed and awestruck, humbled with fear.

SGT PEPPER WAS JUST A DABBLER 

    "My smile is stuck, I can’t go back to your frownland," he warbles through werewolf teeth on Frownland, the opening track. And for 28 songs he sinks those fangs into your brain and chews. You feel for The Magic Band, and boy, they must have been to have even remembered which bit of what song comes next. The tunes jump about like hyper kids with Ritalin grins. Tunes? More like attention deficit symphonies. Mad chattering rhythms, a dozen different time signatures in a song, random bits of blues, rock, folk and assorted musical perversions I couldn’t begin to categorize. Random guitar wails. Gratuitous sax. And over all of it in his importuning multi-octave growl, the insistent babbling insanity of the Captain’s stream of incontinence, all fast and bulbous squids eating dough in polyethylene bags, lipstick Kleenex and mice toes scampering, girls named bimbo limbo spam, and dank drum and dung dust.
     I gave Trout Mask Replica the recommended five listens. I still couldn’t hum a single tune. Although one song that got wedged in a loose flapping fold of my brain was The Blimp, which features a hysterical loudhailer voice intoning "The tits, the tits, the blimp, the blimp, the mothership" over a demented, repetitive hurdy gurdy riff.

RANT MAN BE

    Beefheart buffs will know the legends. How the Captain, aka Don Van Vliet, had his musicians rehearse for a year to translate the simmering visions in his skull into something approaching actual songs, then recorded 20 of them in one day. How he wouldn’t let them eat or sleep or leave his house. How he made them wear dresses and subjected them to endless hours of group therapy. How he brought Frank Zappa in as producer, and how Zappa recognized instantly an evil genius at work, and how he basically left Beefheart to get on with making his magnum opus of madness. You wonder how the band put up with his abuse, but would you mess with a man who could hit High C while simultaneously blowing on two saxophones?
    Whether the Captain was a real deal loony tune, crazy like a fox or simply, as Lester Bangs suggested, ‘the only true Dadaist in rock’ doesn’t really matter. Trout Mask Replica stands alone, a jabbering beacon at the far edges of our universe, pulsing its arrhythmic logorrhea through bursts of static, warning of the epic weirdness and flights of madness that lurk in the human mind.
    "The tits, the tits. The blimp, the blimp." The horror, the horror.

Moby Dork and his excellent whaling misadventures

MOBY STICK: POLE-VAULTING IS FOR WIMPS
Photo: Palani Mohan

Sometimes you get to live out your dreams. I adore this kind of story, a no-commissions take-no-prisoners risk-fest, setting off for some far flung corner of the world where weird people still do strange stuff. Moby Dick has long been one of my favourite books. I love Melville's dense and compelling prose, his flights of fancy (see The Whiteness of the Whale) and his general storytelling genius. So it was absolutely mind-blowing to find myself in a flimsy craft with some very rugged chaps paddling after a large and increasingly irate sperm whale just like they did in Melville's day. The whole enterprise was so very nearly a bust. Photographer Palani Mohan and I had been languishing in the little village known as Lamalera for nigh on a month without the sight of a single sperm whale and were about to call it quits when on our last full day on the island of Lembata, I ventured out with one of the whaling crews mainly out of sheer boredom. As you will see with what follows, the boredom didn't last long. Of course the demise of the great fish was heartbreaking, but for the villagers, among the last on the planet to practise true subsistence whaling, it was just another day at the office. Here's the story. And some awe-inspiring images.

When the first spouts were seen and we bent our backs to the oars, I began to wish I'd left Moby Dick undisturbed in my bookcase. For we were paddling out to do battle with leviathan, armed with needles and pins, in a boat made of matchsticks, and my mind was awash with the nameless terrors of Herman Melville's white whale.

"Hiva! Hiva!'' shouted the crew, calling on their ancestors, asking that courage not fail them. Each stroke brought us closer to our prey - an 11-metre, 20-tonne bull sperm whale churning lazy circles in the warm blue sea, proclaiming his presence with each misty roar of his spout.

Half an hour earlier, the unforgiving equatorial sun just past its zenith, the Tena Puka had been creeping back towards the Indonesian village of Lamalera, on the far eastern island of Lembata, where for more than three centuries men have gone down to the sea in wooden boats to hunt whales. The barest hint of a breeze luffed the woven palm-frond sail. Men dozed in a palm-wine torpor. "No whale today,'' said the captain, Sipri Demon, half-asleep at the tiller.

Two other boats, known as pelendangs, had been out with the Tena Puka, describing fruitless tacks across the Savu Sea since sun-up. Not a single spout had been descried since early April, more than six weeks ago, when a smallish sperm whale calf was caught. Meat was running low, and a palpable despondency was beginning to settle over the hunters and their families.

 "Clan trouble,'' Captain Demon explained that morning, shaking his head, as we pushed the boat down the glittering black beach and out through the breakers. Lamalerans believe any disharmony in the village will keep the whales away. The night before, in a noisy public meeting, a simmering feud over the division of meat from the last catch had finally been put to rest.

I settle into a sweaty trance, the Tena Puka pushing half-heartedly against indolent waves. We're half an hour or more behind the other pelendangs, who have almost gained the shore, when we hear the first shout.

MOBY TAIL: I AM JUST OUT OF FRAME,
REDECORATING MY BOXER SHORTS
Photo: Palani Mohan 

"Baleo! Baleo!'' There she blows! One of the youths who keep vigil on the hilltop has seen the telltale puffs of a sperm whale spout and raises the cry.

We scramble for the oars. Captain Demon is dancing a little jig as he swings the prow seaward. He grabs my shoulder and gives me a shake. "Paus!  Paus!'' he hisses, eyes suddenly full of blood and thunder. It means "Pope fish'' in Bahasa Indonesia. (It is taboo for the hunters to speak the whale's "real'' name - "kotakelema'' in their native tongue, Lamaholot - while at sea.)

"Hiva! Hiva!'' we chant, blistering our palms as we pull. Elias the harpooner is unhurriedly honing his barb on a whetstone. "Wocka wocka'' sings the steel as a gleaming edge replaces dull rust.

Each minute seems to stretch out interminably as we cut a foaming wake towards the whale. Suddenly the wet blasts sound close now, very close, and I put my oar down for a moment and turn to face the front of the boat just as the whale - not five metres in front of us - flings its flukes skyward and disappears into the depths. The tail is at least three metres across, terrifying and beautiful, sprung with an ineffable tendinous strength.

For five minutes, maybe more, there's calm. Then, off my side of the boat, a roiling disturbance and a rising black shadow, and the beast's huge block of a head bursts from the blue like a submarine that's just blown its tanks, covering us in acrid spray with a bellowing snort from its spiracle.

Curious, or befuddled, it floats there, spouting and eyeing us. It could easily outrun the boat but doesn't, and Captain Demon leans on the tiller as we row furiously. Elias fits the harpoon into its bamboo shaft, and with unerring balance dances onto his platform; thick bamboo sticks lashed to the Tena Puka's prow. Slowly the whale starts to swim, undulating its flukes. Elias crouches, his dart cocked.

At last the whale senses something amiss, and starts to churn the water into white curd. It lists like a stricken ship, giving Elias what he's been waiting for - a clean shot at the vulnerable spot behind its flipper. Noiselessly he leaps: burying his barb into blubber, flailing as he slides off the broad black back.

MOBY BLOWS: THE 'WHALE STONE' 
AND HUNTERS' LOOKOUT

 In a chaos of foam the whale begins its panicked run, and the rope jerks tight, quivering and humming with a wild electricity. Elias scrambles back into the boat as we take off on what Yankee whalers called the "Nantucket sleigh ride''.  In front of me, Franciscus, one of the "matros'', or crew, loops the line around a timber post to increase the drag and stop it whipping about. The rope is a constant threat; when the whale sounds it can cut through flesh like butter, or drag a careless hunter down to a watery grave.

Minutes of this, being pulled about like a toy, then the whale slows. Gathers its strength. Regards us with a baleful eye. It hoists its flukes into the air and smashes them down two metres from where I'm sitting. There's a blast like a thunderclap. Dion, another matros, shoves my head none too gently below the gunwhales, shouting “down, down!’’.

My ears are ringing and I feel like my bowels are about to fail me. "Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it,'' wrote Melville of the sperm whale's tail. "No ribs of man or boat can withstand it.'' The whale wields its flukes like a gladiator's mace again, further away this time. Spray flies. Then he sounds, and rises under the boat, knocking us off our perches with a great thump. The timbers quiver and groan. "Santa Domingo,'' cry the crew and I'm jabbering away in tongues, summoning half-remembered prayers from strange cobwebby places.

Elias, fearless, leaps upon the beast again, embedding another harpoon. The whale rolls and roils, tangling the ropes around its thick torso. The two other pelendangs, Java Tena and Demo Sapan, are scudding toward us, sails flapping, oars flying. Both manage to get harpoons fast to the whale, then back off, swiftly paying out rope, leaving us to face the brunt of the whale's mounting fury. 

IT is hard to imagine a more apt setting to hunt sea monsters than Lamalera. The village, about 900km east of Bali, oozes portents; beyond the steep green hill that divides the twin communities of Lamalera A and B rear volcanic peaks, including the active, smoke-belching Ale Ile. On clear mornings you can see across the Ombai Strait, a sperm whale breeding ground, to Timor.

The beach is dotted with bleached whale bones, and the restless earth leaks a sulphurous stink, lending credence to the fire and brimstone sermons each Sunday (the Catholic mission has been established for more than a century and most of Lamalera’s 2000 inhabitants are Christians). A strong streak of animism survives, however. On April 30, the day before the official six-month hunting season begins, elders plod up the mountain to the whale stone, a panoptic perch that resembles a sperm whale, and offerings are made to the whale god.

Only toothed whales, such as sperm and pilot whales (as well as manta rays and dolphins), are hunted by the Lamalerans. Plankton-eating behemoths like the blue whale, regularly sighted in the Savu sea, are sacred - the islanders believe their ancestors arrived on the back of one. Lamalera is the last place on earth where sperm whales are regularly harpooned from traditional wooden vessels – and after May’s acrimonious International Whaling Commission meeting, it may for some time be the only place in the world where subsistence whaling of any kind occurs.

In a move spearheaded by an angry Japanese contingent smarting after losing their battle to have the ban on commercial whaling lifted, subsistence whaling by native american and aboriginal tribes in the United States and Russia was banned. The tribes, included Eskimos and the Chukotka people, hunt the more docile plankton-eating bowhead and grey whales.

MOBY DOCKED: LET THE STENCH BEGIN
Photo: Palani Mohan

The Indonesian government tolerates the hunt on Lamalera, viewing it as true subsistence whaling (in any case, Indonesia is not a signatory to the IWC). In a good year, 20 or 30 whales may be caught; in a bad year, none. The meat is eaten and bartered with hilltribes for grains, fruit and vegetables, while the oil – both the valuable “spermaceti’’ from the head and the lesser stuff the drips from strips of blubber - is used to fuel lamps.

Like the Quakers who dominated the Yankee sperm whale fishery in the latter part of the 19th century, Lamalera's whale hunters believe God is on their side.  "Faith is very important,'' says Papa Ignatzius, 48, master boatbuilder and the grizzled harpooner of the Demo Sapan. His beachside house bears testimony to successful hunts; huge vertebrae form fretwork above the doors and the bleached arches of ribs decorate flowerbeds.

"When you're about to jump onto a whale, you aren't thinking about your wife or your kids or whether you remembered to kick the dog that morning,'' he says. "You are praying to God with all your might to guide your harpoon.'' No small measure of faith is invested in the pelendangs, which take a beating during the hunt. Crafted by hand from a local timber similar to teak, the boats are held together by an elaborate system of wooden dowels and pegs. They measure about 10 metres in length, weigh around a tonne and carry a crew of eight to 12. Twenty-five of the craft sit under thatched huts on the beach, but fewer than half of them have active crews. Lamalerans believe their pelendangs, named after ancestors, are invested with an immortal soul. Eyes are painted on the front so the boat can see. 

"If I make a mistake of even one millimeter when building a boat ... disaster,'' says Papa Ignatzius. "We call the sperm whale the "doctor fish'', because he is so smart. If there is a mistake in the boat, a weakness, then the whale will strike it in exactly that place.''

None of the villagers know just how long ago their ancestors arrived at Lamalera, or when they first summoned the nerve to harpoon a whale. But a Portuguese document dated 1624 describes the hunt in some detail. If accurate, it means the Lamalerans had the business down to a fine art two centuries before Melville conceived Ahab and his monomaniacal quest.

How much longer the hunt will continue is open to conjecture. While the elders say that as long as there are Lamalerans, they will hunt whales, you can't help noticing many of the pelendang crews are a bit long in the tooth. The younger generation have largely opted for less risky occupations.

MOBY WHO? A WHALE HUNTER OF LAMALERA
Photo: Palani Mohan 

"I don’t know what the future holds for us,'' says Noel Beding, 24, a computer studies graduate from a Bali college who now helps run his father's homestay in Lamalera B. "We want to keep our traditions alive, but maybe in the future we can make our living from tourism. I don't want my kids to have to hunt whales. I want them to have electricity and television and a good education, to see the world.’’

His father, Abel Beding, hunted whales as a youth. "I'm too old for that now,’’ he says. “It’s a hard living. You’re either sitting in the boat bored stiff or worrying you’re about to die.'' These days he makes a living renting rooms to the trickle of tourists who make their way to Lamalera. “Things are changing here,’’ he says. “Lamalera is waking up to the modern world.” A couple of years ago, he bought a generator and a television. Children gather in front of his house each night to gape at Sylvester Stallone movies.

Clouds are gathering on Lamalera's horizon. Lembata Island, until last year part of Flores district, has now been made a separate district, which means more funds from Jakarta. Local officials are keen to exploit the tourism potential of the whale hunters, and have begun construction of a new road that would cut dramatically the travelling time from the main port of Lewoleba - currently a five-hour, bone-jarring vertiginous odyssey in an ancient Land Rover.

The barter economy has been disrupted by the modern world’s intrusion. Tourists are welcome to go on a whale hunt, provided they pay. "I think people got a bit greedy after a Japanese documentary crew was here four or five years ago,'' says Abel Beding. "They splashed lots of money around.''

A day out on a pelendang is 35,000 rupiah. If a whale is caught and you want to take photographs, the fee is 150,000 rupiah, or 700,000 for video. You can make your own sacrifice at the whale stone, but it will cost you 500,000 rupiah. The charges seem fair, considering the uniqueness of Lamalera and the very real risks whaling poses to life and limb. But if the hunt becomes a  gory tourist bloodsport rather than true subsistence whaling, public opinion - generally sympathetic - may turn against the whale hunters.  

  

MOBY DEAD: HUNTERS
AND THEIR PRIZE
Photo: Palani Mohan

The sperm whale, also known as Physeter macrocephalus, or the cachalot, is the grand prize for Lamalerans. The meat from a big bull can sustain the village for months. Adult males can reach lengths of more than 20 metres long and weigh 50 tonnes. Females rarely exceed 13 metres.

Sperm whales have the largest brain of any animal in earth's history - six times the size of a human brain – and a penis as long as the average NBA player is tall. They are covered in a tough layer of blubber up to a foot thick, and their four-chambered heart weighs as much as two grown men.

Their main source of food is the giant squid, which lives in deep ocean trenches. Sperm whales can dive to depths of three kilometres, staying under water for up to two hours. They have the largest head of any animal, up to six metres long and three metres high. The top half contains a case filled with spermaceti, a fragrant oil prized by the Yankee whalers for its clean-burning qualities and use as a lubricant. Below the case is a waxlike honeycomb structure believed to be used in echolocation, pinpointing food in the inky depths, and regulating buoyancy. Ambergris, an ash-coloured, sweet-scented substance found in lumps in the sperm whale's intestines, is still prized as a fixative for perfumes.

A full-grown bull's lower jaw may reach five metres, studded with more than 50 curved teeth up to 15cm long, which fit into holes in the upper jaw when the mouth is closed. Sperm whales are generally social animals. Pods consist of females and calves, and "bachelor schools'' of young males. Older bulls are solitary, but will engage in fierce battles with rivals for the right to mate (this is accomplished by swimming upside down under the female). They can live as long as 70 years, and since the ban on commercial whaling in the 1970s, a population which some scientists believe dipped as low as 200,000 worldwide, is beginning to recover.

Melville, who went whaling for several years, found inspiration for his classic novel Moby Dick in the true story of the whaleship Essex, which was charged head on and sunk by an enormous, enraged bull sperm whale in 1820.

   

MOBY GONE:
FAREWELL TO LEVIATHAN
Photo: Palani Mohan 

WHALING is without doubt a risky business - just ask Benedictus Demon. Like a modern-day Ahab, he hobbles about on one leg, the other a wooden stump. A matros on the pelendang Kebakopuka, the 52-year-old recalls a huge pod of whales being spotted one June morning in 1996.

 "Two other boats had already harpooned whales, and about 8am we fastened onto a big one, about 13 metres. I was the harpooner's assistant, so my job was to pay out the rope and make sure it didn't get twisted. Well, the whale was putting up a hell of a fight, and I didn't notice the rope had become looped around my leg, below the knee. When the whale dived, the rope cut right through my leg, even the bone. It took six hours to get to the hospital. I thought I was a dead man.’’

Three years earlier, the boat was dragged more than 80km, almost to Timor, by a massive bull. “After a day and a night, we decided to cut the rope,’’ he says. “We drifted for three days, with no food and hardly any water. We were all nearly dead when a cruise liner picked us up near Komodo.''

Marcelinus Ratu, a 28-year-old matros on Demo Sapan, could be forgiven for hating whales, for making revenge his quest. When Marcelinus was still in his mother's belly, his father was smitten by a whale and died instantly. But there are no hard feelings, he says. "It’s just a job. I’m not out for revenge. Actually, I like and respect whales, but we need to feed our families.’’

Cowering in the Tena Puka as the flukes fly, I can’t help pondering his father’s fate. The whale wheels around, using the featureless expanse of its head as a battering ram. “Santa  Domingo,'' cry the crew, baling furiously as water seeps through the straining timbers. Between flurries, the crew haul on the rope, getting us up alongside the whale, then they lean out with sharp knives and furiously stab into the blubber, trying to get at the vital organs. One of the crew manages to stick a gaffer hook deep into the whale's spiracle, prompting a savage burst of tail-swatting. Knife clenched between his teeth, Franciscus swims out to the raging fish and opens up a cut behind its hump. Fresh gouts of blood stain the sea.

He dog-paddles back to the boat, just as the whale coils and unleashes the full power of its tail, snapping off the harpooner's platform and staving the inch-thick planks of the prow like so much balsa wood. The hole is just above the waterline, but the boat has been fatally weakened. Rope is paid out until we are at a safe distance from the whale, and the Demo Sapan charges in to take up the fight. “Scared?’’ laughs Franciscus, as he dives overboard and strokes off to continue the fray.

Scared scarcely begins to cover it. After nearly an hour in a half-flooded boat being battered by a big angry fish, complete and abject terror would be a more accurate summation of my mental state. The crew are laughing at me and making loud spouting sounds. Franciscus has somehow straddled the back of the whale and works his knife up and down, effectively hobbling the deadly flukes. Each time it tries to hoist its tail, the gash gapes wider, bleeding crimson. “Baleo!’’ someone shouts, as more spouts are spied. Half a kilometre away, five or six sperm whales have stopped to investigate the commotion. They lift their heads out of the water, swinging them from side to side. They circle us, stop, and swim slowly away.

It takes three more hours until the great fish expires, jaw horribly agape, spouting clots of gore in its final agonised writhings. At last its island bulk lies still; the pool of blood thinning, mingling with the pinks and oranges of sunset.

MOBY BONE: LAST
 OF THE WHALE HUNTERS?
Photo: Palani Mohan

It's almost dark by the time the corpse is towed back some 5km to shore, hauled into the shallows and secured with ropes. The entire populace seems to be on the beach, hopping and babbling beneath flaming torches. In the fading light, a massive blue whale is sighted, cruising just 20m offshore, spouting its towering spout. A good omen, the villagers agree.

At sunrise, butchering will begin. Great chunks of rich meat will be divided up, according to strict and ancient formulae. Spermaceti will be ladled into buckets. Women will pad about, squares of blubber balanced on their heads, dripping oil down their backs. By midday, a sickening, pore-deep stench will have settled like a blanket over Lamalera.

But tonight belongs to the whale hunters of tomorrow: they howl and cavort on the beach, terrible naked imps bathed in blood and torchlight, leaping from beached boats to hurl slivers of bamboo at imaginary monsters.

   
 

God is a DJ

Midday, Sunday. Maybe a year on from my first rave party. I’m slumped in an overstuffed, ratty couch in Hayden’s living room. Hayden is Hong Kong's underground DJ non pareil, an elusive, pretty, vampiric figure who sucks an eclectic crowd into his orbit. We’ve just walked up six flights of garbage strewn stairs. I, as the newest acolyte, got to carry his heavy record box. Sarongs in psychedelic patterns have been draped over the windows, drenching the room in an eerie glow. A lava lamp bubbles in a corner. 

A huge poster of a half-naked Asian woman flanked by faded record covers adorn one wall. Sagging shelves line two others, packed to the ceiling with vinyl in well-worn sleeves. On a large coffee table are overflowing ashtrays, ripped packs of Rizlas, a huge glass bong and a strange contraption crafted from a juice container and a couple of foil-wrapped straws. Hayden is already back on the decks despite having just played a marathon set in Neptunes. The music is ear-bleedingly loud.

The Saturday night rave and debauched after party has by now become a regular weekend routine. I know I am doing terrible damage to my brain, but I am having so much fun, or at least I tell myself I am, that I don’t really care. By now I'm necking up to three pills in an evening, trying to recapture that elusive first experience. I am also finding myself regularly around at Biscuit's on a Tuesday evening, procuring cocaine to bounce back from the “blue Monday’’ syndrome.

    “Hayden,” I shout. “Don’t the neighbours ever complain?’’

    “Regularly,’’ he says, in a clipped British public schoolboy accent. “But fuck them.’’ His Eurasian good looks, commanding height and arrogant air create a magnetic aura. Arrayed around the living room are eight others; his beautiful but spaced out girlfriend, some local club chicks, a couple of brain-fried heavies, another DJ, and Biscuit. Everyone is off their heads, nodding along to the music. Conversation is, well, limited.

Hayden puts his headphones down, and nods at the fruit juice contraption. One of the heavies grunts his assent, and from a glassine bag on the coffee table shakes out some cloudy crystals onto a creased piece of aluminium foil. Hayden picks up the homemade bong, and as the heavy waves a lighter beneath the foil, wisps of smoke disappear into the foil-tipped straw. 

    “What is that stuff,’’ I ask the Eurasian girl sitting next to me on the sofa. 

She looks at me with disdain. “Ice. Meth. Bing. Duh.’’

The foil and bong do the rounds. Some partake, others refuse. I am fascinated but uninterested, wrapped up safe and warm in my ecstasy blanket. Although I do snort a line when Biscuit pulls out his coke stash and chops out some rails on a chipped dinner plate. I hand him back the rolled up thousand dollar note and he leans over. 

   “Stay away from the other stuff mate.’’ He nods towards the foil, which is now stained with a poisonous dark treacly trail. “That’s bad news, that is.’’

I stand up and move over to the decks, where Hayden is back in control. I focus intently on what he’s doing. Then I screw up my courage and ask if I can have a go.

    “Sure,’’ he says, with an evil grin. “But it’s not as easy as it looks.’’

One record is playing. He hands me another.

    “Here, try and mix this in. You have to match the beats exactly.’’ He points at the mixer. “These are the faders. They control the volume of what you hear playing. The knobs here are the bass, midrange and treble. This light here tells you which channel you hear in the headphones. And these sliders here on the decks are the pitch control.’’

I put the headphones around my neck and cock one side up over an ear, like I've watched Hayden do so many times. I put the record on the turntable, start it playing and with shaking hands lower the needle onto the first grooves. Noise explodes in my ear and the beats are impossibly fast. Hayden laughs and stabs at another button on the turntable.

    “Some records are 45rpm. Some are 33,’’ he explains.

Now the beats are at normal speed, but they are out of sync with the record that’s playing. With increasing panic, I slide the pitch control up and down, trying to find the right beats per minute. Then I feel I have it. As I’ve watched countless DJs do, I wind the record back to the start, count in the beats and then set it spinning. With thudding heart in mouth, I slowly slide the fader up, and for five seconds, ten, the two tunes are playing in sync. I’m mixing. I’m a fucking DJ! Then it all goes horribly wrong. The beats get out of sync, drowning the room in a horrible syncopated mess. Frantically I stab at the record, speeding it up, slowing it down, but it’s no use. I’ve lost it. The Eurasian chicks grimace. One covers her ears.

    “Boo. Sack the DJ,’’ sneers one of the heavies.

I hand the headphones back to Hayden.

    “Not bad for a first try,'' he smirks

I sit down, sinking back into the sofa. We’ll sit around listening to music as our brains slowly baste for hours, drifting, timeless, aimless, mindless, before people begin to make their excuses and slope off home. And all the while I’m sitting there, I’m thinking, man, I have got to get on those decks again.

Sorted for E's and whizz on Planet Neptunes

Britain's famed, filmed and fantastically infamous Summer of Love strikes in 1988, centered on the legendary Hacienda Club in Manchester, or 'Madchester', as it is rechristened; a house etched in acid, baptized in the blood, sweat and cheers of a happy throng of hooj loons, and propped up by the profits from New Order's back catalogue. Hong Kong's very own sweat-drenched lovefest strikes some years later, midway through the naughty nineties. With copious quantities of Amsterdam’s finest ecstasy pouring into the place along with a steady stream of the world's best DJs, the entire island suddenly goes stark raving mad.

IS IT A PILL?

Despite my innocence and sheer ignorance of the scene, I quickly become intrigued. It is my duty, I decide, to chronicle this weekly descent into shamanistic trance states that seems to have seized some of the territory's best and brightest, along with its worst and dumbest. The film of Irvine Welsh’s book Trainspotting has just erupted onto Hong Kong screens, and buoyed by repeated viewings, as well as a careful reading of Ecstasy, Welsh’s seminal short story collection, I feel ready for my first rave. It is at Jimmy’s Sports Bar, a long, narrow afterthought of a place overlooking the Hong Kong Stadium behind Causeway Bay. For its standard crowd of thirsty rugger buggers, it will just about do. But stormed by a teeming league of dancing, drug-twunted nutters, it hums with an ever-present hint of panic and a sense that things could go awry at any moment. Tonight, the DJ hails from none other than the Hacienda. Graeme Park is headlining.

As I stand in line to get in, I notice people surreptitiously rummaging in pockets and wallets and ingesting what I presume to be the drug du jour. Inside, a great pulsating bass slaps me in the face, as a smoke machine burps and hisses and strobes stutter. On the narrow catwalks that skirt the bars, bottlenecks are already forming as punters swig from bottles and neck pills. I say hi to some faces I recognize, then run into Biscuit in a darkened corner, nattily attired, kangol-bonced, saucer-eyed, and with a pink plastic container hung around his neck. We have met once or twice before, in my quest to procure some of his powdered good times. He is the man in demand, the hero of the hour, the cat in the hat. He's your pusherman.

   'Hello old mate, old mucker, old son. You sorted or what?'
   'Er, not really mate. It's not like that. I'm here working. Doing a story on the rave scene.'
   'Heavy, geezer. Tell you what, you probably want one of these then, innit?'
He unscrews the tiny tupperware and hands me a small pink tablet. It doesn’t have any kind of logo pressed into it – I was expecting a Dove, or a Mitsubishi or a Barney Rubble, the pills I had been told were doing the rounds.
    'You sure this is real?’
    'Would I lie to you, mate? Three hundred, yeah? Cheers.'

IS IT A THRILL?

Biscuit, I later learn, makes regular trips to Amsterdam to bring back hundreds of pills embedded in plaster casts. I hand over my cash as sneakily as I can, which is not very sneakily at all, and expect to feel the grip of a detective’s hand fall on my shoulder like an executioner’s axe. But nothing happens, Biscuit fades into the crowd and I decide I’d better buy a beer so I can take my pill. I hesitate for a moment, wondering if I’m about to become one of the rare ecstasy casualties you read about, overheating in a corner and going into a coma. Then I think: cover the story. So with a quick glance around, I gulp the pill and wonder if I'm really in for Welsh’s 'rocket ride to Russia’.

Ten minutes pass, fifteen, then I feel a queasy churning in my bowels. I weave across the staggered platforms of dance floor, stumble up and down darkened steps. Writhing bodies have begun to coalesce into larger organisms, as if controlled by some benign hive mind. I'm vaguely aware of dilating pupils, goofy grins, hugs, affirmations of everlasting affection and the ridiculous, ubiquitous glow sticks. Finally I burst into the men's. As I perch on the porcelain throne, my loosened guts giving way, I’m overcome by wave after wave of euphoria. It’s nothing like the sharp crystalline kick of coke. This is all warm and fuzzy and gooey. I almost keel over on the crapper, enjoying the greatest dump I've ever taken.

I wash my hands and marvel at the mystery of water, its soft liquid kiss on my skin. But some insistent force has taken over my body, impelling motion, propelling me to the dance floor. I pass a mirror and pause. A silly rictus has meandered across my mug. My pupils have waged war with my irises and won. I stare, mesmerized, thinking, damn, I’m really looking quite splendiforously spiffing. Then some idiot throwing crazed shapes careens into me, and I resume my mission. Which is … er … who cares when you feel like this? Forget the story. I'm looking for a friendly face but it's needles and haystacks because they are suddenly all friendly. The entire dance floor has been engulfed by this wild tide of good vibes and smiles, as cascading slabs of synth fall from towering stacks of speakers and gut-busting bursts of bass crash through thudding cones.

I spot a couple of friends from work, who judging by their deranged grins are as off their tits as I am. Without a word, we’re suddenly pogo-ing about in a group hug, all sparking teeth and flashing eyes. Time passes, how much is anyone's guess, and the initial rush recedes enough for me to remember I'm supposed to be working. I spend the rest of the rave quizzing clubbers about their experiences in the scene in between bouts of inane jabbering and bursting bubbles of glistening bliss. I can see what this is all about now. I blink, wipe the sweat from my face, and it's four in the morning. Bodies in varying states of undress buffet each other, little eddies and swirls form in the crowd. The DJ is dropping rapid fire depth charges which shudder through my belly.

Around five, a new current begins to sweep through the crowd. I keep hearing the same name. 'Neptunes.’ 'You lot off to Neptunes?’ 'Neptunes, innit geezer.’ Neptunes? I’m wondering about this sudden enthusiasm for a grotty basement bar in Wan Chai usually filled with off-duty maids, decrepit hookers and beer-swigging businessmen hoping to get lucky. But I go with the flow, my brain still surfing a serotonin tsunami, piling into a taxi with a bunch of smiling strangers.
    'I think Hayden is spinning tonight,’ says one of the women, heavily made up, dressed in Adidas track suit pants and a halter top, sporting clunky looking Reebok trainers.
    'Hayden?’ I enquire.
    'Yeah mate,’ says one of the blokes. 'Best fucking DJ in Hong Kong.’
    'On the planet,’ giggles the chick. 'Planet Neptunes, anyway.'

We pile out of the taxi into early morning Lockhart Road, dodging packs of drunks. We float and stagger down the stairs. I’m struck by a strange changing of the guard. Pie-eyed posses of ravers are arriving, as the thinning legion of housemaids drift off to get ready for church, leaving floundering beer-bellies clutching at thin air. Stygian scarcely begins to describe the gloom, but pockets of ultra-violet light illuminate psychedelic swirls on the walls. At the decks is an aloof and impossibly pretty fellow who is wearing an expression of rapt concentration as he prods at vinyl, stabs at buttons and gives vicious little tweaks to dials.

The music is beautiful, washing over the crowd. Hands wave in the air. It’s Sunday morning, and I wonder why the maids are leaving. This is church. The flock has gathered to worship at the altar of ecstasy, although by now people are drifting off to the toilets to do little bumps of coke to keep the buzz going. The music and the drugs seem like some great egalitarian leveler, at least for a few more precious hours, until the comedown comes calling and the piper has to be paid. For now, every man is Everyman. No one cares how much you earn or what you do for a living, hot topics of conversation in Hong Kong's more conventional nightspots.

OR IS IT A BELLYACHE?

I drift towards the back of the club, where pretty young things in various states of disarray slouch into moth-eaten sofas. I’m just taking it in, sucking on a beer, enjoying the fading final stages of the high and beginning to ponder what damage I may have inflicted upon myself when suddenly out of the shadows Biscuit materializes.
   'How was that then, eh mate? I told you the pills were sound.’ His eyes are almost popping out of his head. I do believe he’s been getting high on his own supply.
    'Yeah,' I nod. 'I can see what all the fuss is about.’
    'Word to the wise, though, eh? Don’t overdo it. Law of diminishing returns, innit.’
    'What do you mean?’
    'You'll find out.'
My eyes are drawn to the pink plastic container still dangling around his neck.
   'Got any left,’ I ask, suddenly desperate to recapture the rapture.
   'How about a cheeky half?’
    'Yeah, cool, cheers.'
He fishes another pink pill out of the container, blatantly bites it in half without even bothering about who might be watching, swallows, and hands me the remainder.
    'What do I owe you?’
    'Nothing mucker. It’s on the house. Just remember your old Uncle Biscuit next time you need some gear. Ok?’

Neptunes is now heaving. I push my way out to the dance floor and wait for the freight train to hit me again. And of course it does. But it's not quite as good this time. I'll dance like an idiot until some ridiculous hour, then venture vampire-like into the lost weekend. It will take a couple of days before my brain feels normal again and I can attempt to pen my piece (which will be published in the local rag to no little ruckus, mainly thanks to some disarmingly candid quotes from local DJ stalwart and star in the making Lee Burridge). There will be a day of fuzzy muted numbness, a faint echo of the euphoria, then a day overhung by dark clouds of depression. None of which will stop me doing it again the very next weekend. But it won't be as good next time. Or the next. And it never really is, ever again. But I'll keep on trying, at least for a couple of bent, mental years which will be the best of times and the worst of times. The next rocket to Russia is leaving. All aboard. Everyman for himself.

Confessions of a mullet head

In rap lyrics and as fodder for stand up comics, and from serious academic studies to spoof movies to society's swankiest salons, the mullet has become the hairstyle that just keeps on giving. Every three or four years it barges back into fashion and the popular culture, prompting fresh bouts of hand-wringing, head-shaking and head-banging. In her 2001 documentary American Mullet, filmmaker Jennifer Arnold suggested the mullet had become racially and culturally charged like never before, as the preferred hairstyle of working-class Southern men, lesbians and Mexican Americans.


Just last year the 'Kentucky Waterfall' was back in the headlines when it was banned in Iran as decadent. I don't recall if they actually caught a mullah with a mullet (although I now keep singing this in my head to the tune of The Smiths' Vicar in a Tutu). Perhaps it was all Andre Agassi's fault. Anyway, in the name of Method Journalism, some years ago in Hong Kong I had the most hideous mullet wig made and sallied forth to see how many 'don'ts' you can get from one do. Here's the story:


'One on the sides/don't touch the back
Six on the top/and don't cut it whack, Jack ...'
The Beastie Boys, Mullet Head

It's almost 11pm and I'm standing in a half-empty carriage on Hong Kong's MTR subway train. A creased grandma peers at me sadly and shakes her head. Two young Chinese couples exchange puzzled glances and start giggling behind their hands. A snooty western businessman in a grey suit shoots me snide looks over his magazine.

THE MANE MAN  

As the train snakes and wobbles from Kowloon to Central, a breeze luffs my mane, ruffling the short blond spikes on top and transforming the long golden tresses caressing my neck into a billowing bouffant. I sneak a peek at my reflection in the tunnel-blackened windows. I look like the improbable lovechild of Ziggy Stardust and Martina Navratilova. Tonight, you see, I'm a mullet head.

Of all the ridiculous coiffures down through the ages - powdered periwigs, shock-therapy afros, pink punk spikes, vertiginous beehives - none elicits such instant contempt and hilarity as the mullet. Beloved by footballers, heavy metal guitarists, country singers and the sort of people who attend monster truck shows, the mullet, which for years teetered on the brink of extinction, is making a comeback. The Beastie Boys rap a paean to it. Catwalk models flaunt it. Websites paying tribute abound. The Prozac-popping mafiosi on The Sopranos even discuss its merits at length. You may not know the name, but you know - and probably once sported - the look: short or cropped on the top, long and luxuriant at the back.

What better place to test the powers of the mullet than amidst the packed pubs and clubs of Hong Kong's Lan Kwai Fong and Soho districts? Sporting a truly hideous example of the genre, painstakingly crafted by a wig-maker in the bowels of Kowloon city, I'm venturing into the night to see what a difference a mullet makes. To collect evidence of mullets past and present. To test its reputed pulling power. And to find out why for some, this rug is a drug.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD

Let us pause, however, to bring readers up to speed on the history of this tonsorial travesty. According to Mark Larson and Barney Hoskyns, authors of The Mullet - Hairstyle of the Gods: 'It's the hairstyle that dare not speak its name.' Perhaps not, but a veritable mullet lexicon has evolved, lovingly codified by websites like mulletmadness.com. 'What's all this madness?' it asks. 'Everybody knows the mullet by a different name. There's the SFLB (short front, long back), the short-long, or the two-haircuts-in-one. There's the Tennessee top hat, the Kentucky waterfall, or the Canadian passport. Whatever you and your friends choose to call them, these lovable, furry friends are plentiful and spotting them can be fun for the entire family. Don't forget your mulletcam and send us your best pix.'

The names don't stop there. The ape drape. The soccer rocker (think Robert Baggio or Glen Hoddle). The hockey head (check out the Pittsburgh Penguins' Jaromir Jagr). Then there's the mud flap, the squirrel pelt and the either-or. You get the idea. The mullet knows no borders and spans class, age and race. 'In Holland, a friend told me the name,' writes Larson. 'It has lots of consonants but basically means carpet neck.' In German it's accorded the acronym Vokuhila, for Vorne Kurz, Hinten Lang, or short front, long back.

According to the book, Neanderthal man, ancient Egyptians and Assyrians, Visigoths and Vikings all appreciated the aesthetics of the mullet. Buffalo Bill reputedly hid one under his 10 gallon hat. But the authors lay the blame for its massive resurgence in the 1970s on one man - David Bowie. 'Perhaps he would not like to be associated with something so passe,' says Hoskyns. 'But he had mullets in three separate eras.' Ah yes. What serious student of the mullet could forget Bowie's blond masterpiece, cascading down the back of his lime-green jumpsuit on the cover of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars? Or the blow-dried puff-ball he sports on Aladdin Sane? Or the transdogrified fur-ball of his Diamond Dogs do? 

MINE LOOKED JUST LIKE THIS

Billy Ray Cyrus, the redneck with the Achy Breaky Heart, proudly waved the Confederate flag for his Tennessee top hat. Tennis star Andre Aggassi's was a beauty, until it started to fall out in clumps. Wrestler Hulk Hogan, as his dome thinned, did his best to popularise a sub-species: the skullet (none on the top, long in the back). Other mullet-men past and present include Mel Gibson, Michael Bolton, Kurt Russell, Michael Keaton, Mike Myers and Patrick Swayze. Prodigious goal-scorer and substance-abuser Diego Maradona not only had the 'Hand of God' but for a time affected the hairstyle of the gods.

Hong Kong's hairdresser to the stars, Kim Robinson, is a big fan. 'Every hairstyle has its place. The mullet can be ugly, but it can be beautiful as well. You have that nice, short choppy top and nice and shaggy at the back.' Has he ever worn one? 'Of course. I think it suits me. It can be really sexy.'

Larson and Hoskyns trace the term back to 19th century England, where the epithet 'mullet-head' was on a par with cretin or fool. In the 1930s, they say, the term was used to mean 'curling the hair'. They write: 'The mullet’s genius lies simply in the opportunity it affords one to become two people: someone who from the front looks like a regular person but who from the back is an untamed party-animal-cum-guitar-hero-cum-Viking-warrior. There are two keys to recognising the mullet. Does it look like two hairstyles on one head? And are the ears showing?'

IT MIGHT JUST GROW AND KILL THIS MAN

I peek into the train window again. Two hairstyles? Check. Ears visible? Check. Then the doors hiss open and I take a deep breath and plunge into the crowds of Central station. A quick pause to adjust my rug, and I'm striding confidently through the throng, drinking in the admiring glances. Ziggy's wheedling, reedy riff whines in my ears. In my wake I hear whispers, snickers and guffaws, but I leave them in my silken slipstream. Out of the station and I aim my mullet up the hill until I come to Vodka Bar, an uber-trendy watering hole with 99 varieties of vodka and a likely mullet-count of zero. 

Make that one. 'Is that real? Jesus mate, you look like an idiot,' says Richard, 26, a London limousine driver with a head full of vodka and a mouth full of opinions. Er, thanks, Richard. Confidence dented but mullet defiantly erect, I puff out my chest and try to look as hard as one can in a long blond wig. OK, Richard, pop quiz. Name your top five mullets of all time. 'Er, right. David Bowie, of course. Who else? Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones? Chris Waddle and Glen Hoddle, definitely. Great footballing mullets. Shit, that's only four.' 

SKULLETS WERE ALL THE RAGE
AT THE METH DEALERS BAKE SALE

Nice try. I ask him what it is about the mullet that gives it that certain je ne sais quoi. 'It's just because they're so offensive, innit?' He claims that he's never had one. I charitably fail to point out that this is probably because he's bald. After two vodkas, I notice that I'm not exactly beating the women off with a stick. It's time for a proactive approach. I saunter up to a pair of busty babes knocking back what appears to be vodka-soaked Mars Bars. 'Ooh, gross,' squeals one. The other simply stares with a disconcerting blend of pity and icy contempt. 'My brother had one of those once,' says the first. 'We held him down and shaved it off.'

The bartender, another chrome-dome named Oggy, wanders over. 'What the fuck is that on your head?' he wants to know. I deem the question rhetorical, and decide to take my mullet where it will be more appreciated. 'Ere, hang on,' says Oggy. 'You look a bit like Steve Coogan? The comedian? That character that drinks lager from cans. A Rod Stewart wannabe. Limahl, too, he had a good one.'

 

ANDRE COUNTS THE BALLS IN THE CANISTER

I leave Oggy and his snobby posse to join the al fresco revellers in nearby Le Jardin. Oasis is pumping from the speakers and men in expensive suits shout loudly over inane lyrics in between gulps of pricey red and puffs of stogeys. Not a single mullet adorns the bar, bar mine. 'Hey,' says Alex the Bartender, as I strike a jaunty pose and toss my locks, 'you look like the guys on Chucklevision.' This means nothing to me. 'It's a UK kids' show on the telly,' he explains. 'Two blokes with mullets jump around and act stupid.' He leans over the bar and pats my spikes. 'It's very eighties hair metal. Why would anyone want one? It's the antichrist of haircuts.'

THEY DON"T KNOW WHAT IS WHAT

A couple of beers and umpteen brush offs from members of the opposite sex later, I stumble down the hill to Insomnia, a noisy late-night meat-market in the middle of the Fong. If a man with a mullet can't make his move here, he might as well give up. The hard man on the door gives me a long, hard look, but lets me enter. I notice in the mirror my mullet has become skewed. I ponder whether the biblical Samson rocked the mullet, but resist the temptation to get in a brawl to test whether my do has given me new powers.

As I attempt to realign my wig, a hulking great chap wanders over and introduces himself as 'Sasquatch'. Conversation seems preferable to lone mullet-topped booty-shaking, so I join his group. In my best Austin Powers voice, I leer at one of the females and inquire 'Do I make you horny baby? Do I?' She laughs and her face goes red. At last, a reaction. 'I had a mullet once,' says Sasquatch wistfully. Why? 'I dunno. I guess I wanted a bit of that Mel Gibson/Wayne Gretsky kind of sex appeal. To show my wild side.'

ROADKILL BOLT-ON

'I had a mullet about 10 years ago,' volunteers Paul, a lawyer who also stars in a local drag revue and stands about six foot five in high heels. 'It was when I was in London and I was going through a gothic phase. I had a jet-black mullet and black eyeliner. Actually, it was cut by Vidal Sassoon and cost me 60 quid. The very thought makes me cringe. I must have been very brave.' Could the mullet make a comeback? 'Did it ever really go away?'

Good point. Perhaps the mullet is always lurking in our collective unconscious, never far - quite literally - from our thoughts. Mine, though, is now a mess. It has become a tangled thatch that stinks of smoke and itches like a bastard. It has moulted stray strands all over my face. I reach up and rip it off. There's an immediate blast of cool air and a sense of relief. But I'm also no longer the centre of attention. The jokes dry up, the anecdotes stop. I'm just another bloke with a boring barnet. I make my excuses and leave. I slump in the back of a taxi, wig resembling roadkill on the seat beside me. I think I miss my mullet already. 

     

   

Not the World of Suzie Wong

Wan Chai is Hong Kong's black hole. I don't mean in the Calcutta sense, a Kafka-esque penal colony where broken people do their penance, or some latter day remix of the Kowloon Walled City. I'm not talking about a tired nod to Conrad and his 'earth's dark places' or the Blade Runner cliches beloved of hacks who have run out of credit at the metaphor bank. I mean a real black hole.

ABANDON HOPE ALL
YE WHO ENTER

Wan Chai has a specific mass heavier than the other locales that flank the flagrant harbour; it exerts its own gravitational pull. Your night might begin in some swanky Lan Kwai Fong bar, sipping caviar mohitos drizzled over ice chipped by Eskimos from the Arctic's oldest glacier. You might hob-nob with the snobs in a tony eatery, fawned upon by peons in Prada as you pick at some fussy fusion concoction. You might even drop by this week's must-visit club to bust an elegant, Moet-fuelled move. But sooner or later, most probably later, you are going to end up in Wan Chai, swirled around its fringes, sucked into its downward spiral and then engulfed by its gaping maw.

HELLO MY BIG HONEY

It's inevitable. Inexorable. Ineluctable, even. Basically, it's physics. Just as fraying galaxies at the edge of the universe cannot resist the crushing pull of the absence of matter, so the average Hong Kong party animal, absent of sense, is drawn to the dense centre of Lockhart Road. Once you have been subsumed by this dark mass, different laws apply. A cruel and selfish calculus dictates the behavior of those who go looking for love, or just a cleansing ale, in all the wrong places; the trawling and brawling, the chat-ups and put-downs, come-ons and comedowns. For you are now where the wicked things are, a netherworld where big-livered shellbacks and other rough beasts slouch towards bedlam as temptation importunes at every turn. 

SUCKED IN

These mean streets are not the civilized boulevards of Central, the bohemian byways of Soho, the upwardly mobile Mid-levels or some quaint cobbled petticoat lanes. This is the Wanch, and its concrete canyons and greasy alleys are awash with gang-bangers and glad-handers and game-riggers and dope peddlers, brokers, bankers and other wankers, drunken sailors, dai pai dongs and all night discos, wizened Vietnam War whores, chattering packs of maids on the make, triple-trio triads and bus uncles who hawk smack in the shadows of basketball courts. Wan Chai at night is where China jumps from dusk till dawn, enough to drive the average Joe bananas. Listen carefully and you can hear the whispered myths of late lamented emporia of bad behavior: Neptunes and the Big Apple, Strawberries and La Bamba, the Bridge and the Beer Castle, and of course the Hong Kong Press Club. Each with its secret history, all part of a litany of lost nights and long gone brain cells. 

  

MOTHER TERESA
WAS ON STRIKE TODAY

If you've lived here, you know the drill. There you are once more, inexplicably it seems, in some subterranean den of insanity, sneaking furtive glances at your watch and counting off the diminishing hours still available for sleep as you get another round in. You wince as your credit card takes another body blow. You cruise. You wander. You pose. You want to stop the madness and get off. But you don't. You order another beer, or a shot of tequila, or both. You slope off to the Worst Toilet in Hong Kong, paddling through puddles of piss to clog your sinuses with another rail of crap coke. You look at your watch again. How could it be 5am already? 

FORBIDDEN PLANET

But you see, time behaves strangely the closer you get to a black hole. It compresses, distorts, folds in upon itself. You might as well be wearing one of those melted Dali timepieces. You pat your pocket to see if you've remembered your sunglasses. You know it's almost light outside, and you also know your shades are like a superhero's cloak of invisibility, shielding you from the withering stares and disgusted snickers of the early birds. You are in the wormhole. A smoke machine hisses and through harsh neon and fits of strobe, you discern sinister leering faces of people who are not your friends. There is no quantum of solace. Nothing much happens as you approach the event horizon. You are way beyond vanishing point. You are in Wan Chai, fucked up and alone. Again. The baseline thump echoes your agony. Wanton piranhas swim the fringes of desultory dance floors. Perhaps Kafka is apt, after all. You're certainly trapped. Punishment is in the post. Techno prisoners.