It is now very very late at night, or rather very early in the morning. Just watched some Jeeves & Wooster (the TV series that is) and was struck again by the similarity between Hugh Laurie and that guy who plays Agent Smith and Elrond. Also Stephen Fry is really quite a marvellous actor, and his nose is crooked, and I saw a book he wrote that day as I passed by MPH at Citylink Mall, which if you don't know (meaning you're not Singaporean, which means someone I do not know is reading this blog) is a deeply air-conditioned tunnel between an MRT station and a pair of protruberances that house the spankiest brandest new concert hall and theatre in town, with some interesting shops and lots of expensive, pretentious, boring ones. |

Watched "Far From Heaven" today, which was incredibly lush and shot with deepest pathos by Julianne Moore's wonderful acting. Yesterday attended the premiere of Ong Keng Seng's "Global Soul -- The Buddha Project", where we saw a really fey Ivan H. (at least that's who he looked like, though he jiggled with rather more lard than in published photos when mincing across the entrance to accost a beshawled lady with big hair), Monica G. with a gaggle of journalist types, and Mrs. PM with her swathe of a Smile. The performance itself was a beguilingly boring take on Siddarta Gautama's life, interspersed with mildly amusing monologues on world travelling, its rituals and strange effects. The Swedish Chinese Korean Thai African cast were virtuosi I'm sure, but interminable spans of traditional droning, no matter how plaintive or powerful, very effectively invoke somnolence. Also today a dinner spiced with soft malicious gossip with W and G. Driving rather scary, but improving I do very earnestly hope. |

Je suis un exhibitionniste. It sounds so much better in French. Ehehe. And I don't really know French... altavista's babel fish is a merveille and a gemme. And that reminds me of Douglas Adams. Actually I am lying, because I am reading him right now. This very moment. He was a true genius, a good person and an intellectual manta ray. Please, if you haven't (how can you?), go read his books, soak in the ideas and emerge a crazier and better bête. |

The Voice of Faye Wong: The inchoate sniff of a wisp of an otherworldly drug that had me totally, head over heels, hopelessly sunk, rapturously rapt for many, many years. Still does that to me, in fact. But I am slightly, if only just, more sober now than when hormones did their tobogganing through rather sedate veins and insidiously fattening arteries (alas, to know that only too recently), and hope to present a more temperate case now than then (there are, I believe, traces of my fanaticism scattered over the world wide web... they reek Beatlemania-esque at their highest). First, the quality of her voice, which practically defies description but not quite... I guess. The almost metallic but soft ring of Karen Carpenter, clothed in a sensibility delicately true as the most folkish Peter Paul and Mary tune, with a logic rigorous and ineffable as the fractals of an elusive electromagnetic wavelet. And her range, which deepens to a wrenching snarl throbbing with infernal seduction, then glides to an insouciant drawl, weary but interested, that elides with a squeal and a whoop to a soaring lark weaving jagged and perfect ribbons of sound in an uncharted area of one's mind. The purity of her tone has suffered over the years... smoking does damage one's respiratory tubes, no matter how many addled singers' claims to the contrary, but her rough-at-the-edges pipes still sound a lot better than most do after a honey regimen. And when she sings in her proper domain, which is a studio, and not live (though her stadium belting is simply Amazing when she decides to properly do it), there is nothing like it. I downloaded a clip of her trying out a new song, and though I had not been terribly, frightfully, enamoured of her past few releases, it sent wiggly sensations skipping up and down my legs as she, just so, performed an aural Danse Macabre that leads not to death but mottled life, terrifyingly, poundingly, pleadingly and shamelessly good. Yes, Faye Wong Is Persephone, who forever goes, and always returns. |

How can people read "Chicken Soup for the 'Gullible Section of Disgustingly Trite Demographic' Soull" and not blanch? The reason is come, and eet is not pleasantt. I received in my email, from a most socially conscious soul I believe, an example of the worst of that variety of writing. I shall not mar my blog with its foul air, but only say that I am glad that the people I know don't seem to go in for this kind of drivel. If you, friend, do (ah the horror), wean yourself... please. My deah friend expresses it well, "it makes me sick .. it really does.. it's beyond disgusting... even if it were a true story, the writer has managed to mangle it... I dare say even chicken soup for the goodness knows what is better written...far better ... I never thought I would live to say that". Ehehe. |