Cloverfield: My Review. With a lot of spoilers.

The Tradition of ‘Apocalypse’ 

There are two core themes that run through every great tale of apocalypse, especially in the science fiction variety.

Firstly, a moral statement is made about contemporary society. This can be traced all the way back to the first great apocalyptic sci-fi story, H.G.Wells’ War of the Worlds. The brutal and efficient annihilation of the world’s greatest imperial power by strange and impossibly advanced extra-terrestrial colonialists is a blunt and (even more so at the time) terrifying metaphor about how the European powers were treating the rest of the world at the time, and how objectionable it was.

It is also a theme well implemented in Steven Spielberg’s recent remake of War of the Worlds, and while blended with his own personal ideas, comes across terrifyingly well as America is ‘pacified’ with ease by alien invaders. An intended lesson in the dark side of imperialism.

This theme of moral judgement via apocalypse obviously goes much farther back, and has Biblical connotations too. But within the realm of modern civilisation, it has really been science fiction authors that have managed to continue this theme effectively. The threat of apocalypse has been an ever present one after all, with two world wars, the Cold War, numourous pandemics, global warming and the ever expanding domain of science, and it is only expected for those who are brave enough to think about what tomorrow might hold to consider that it might not hold anything very pleasant, mainly as the result of man’s greed, immorality and lack of empathy for the world around him. It’s almost as though it has gone full circle and ended up in the same place as the Book of Revelations 2000 years ago.

This is an idea that is also prevalent in Far Eastern science fiction, which through a combination of Buddhist ethics and it’s own recent history has arrived at similar conclusions, and is probably most easily visible in the seminal monster-flick Godzilla. Here man’s hubris becomes his own downfall by the father of all by-products of nuclear testing, and it is man who will pay the heavy price for trying to sieze control of such terrible power.

The other great theme that runs through tales of apocalypse is in the final moments of the story, the idea that we should pity those perpetrators of disaster. The aliens in War of the Worlds, for example, are a great, sentient civilization. Having destroyed their own planet, they are in one, desperate last attempt to survive by fleeing to Earth and creating a new homeworld. It is an attempt which ultimately fails (by no act of man), and an entire species with all its history, culture, technology, loves and beliefs is destroyed in an orgy of violence and death of its own making. This is a theme which again still continues up to this day. I guess ‘most’ recently in I Am Legend (which is of course a remake of The Omega Man from the 50’s. But the fact that it is still included in I Am Legend shows you its importance to the genre). You can see it in Godzilla, too. The monster may have wiped out a sizeable area of the city, but it is not the monster’s fault. Man made the beast, and it is man who should be judged morally, not the beast itself.

That’s All Very Well, but What Does It Have to Do With Cloverfield?

Well. You see, after Godzilla came out, as everyone is probably aware, the whole creature-flick B-movie genre was born. Gone are the deep and sombre lessons of judgement and pity, and in comes… well, a guy in a rubber suit jumping on lots of cardboard cut-outs of buildings.

Cloverfield contains nothing of the great themes of the apocalypse genre. There’s no obvious statement on the contemporary nature of New York (or global) society. There’s no attempt to enduce a state of pity for ‘It’ as it rampages around Manhattan. Perhaps that is the film’s great statement. The pure, unfounded meaningless of it all; people run around, get stomped on, die. The end. Perhaps the total lack of a plot is also geared towards this end: some people are at a party, they get separated, they try to meet up, then they all die in an emotionless vacuum and we all leave feeling none the wiser about anything we have just seen.

It is not a good film. Everything feels lazy and under-explored on an emotional level. Not just through what the characters say or do (which is the director’s preogative after all) but through what goes on around them, the situations they are thrown into. We expect mind-boggling stupidity, cliches about love and all of that nonsense, but there’s just nothing to it – these aren’t events that exist to one side of a storyline or a plot, they are the entire film. I walked out the cinema feeling like I couldn’t give a toss about anything that I had just witnessed and it was almost quite frustrating. I really wanted to be sympathetic and engaged by the decisions and reactions of the characters in the film. I really wanted to feel gutted that after so much they had been through they didn’t make it in the end. Instead, I felt like I had just witnessed so much meaningless nonsense there really wasn’t much to think or feel about. Nobody, characters or audience finished that experience feeling like they had learnt anything.

The beginning of the film starts with that long sequence at the party. Clearly I thought influenced by that whole genre of New York-based character driven stories (all that stuff from Woody Allen style indie movies up to Sex and the City etc) and it really seemed like it was going somewhere. But what was the point of it all? Nothing, it turned out. Was it trying to send up that genre, or even take a positive influence from it? No, neither. It didn’t do anything with it. It was just like the first twenty minutes were: “Here are the characters, this one fancies this one, this one doesn’t like this one, bla bla bla, ok, now let’s forget all that and have them running around in circles with a big monster.” 

And then comes the monster’s entrance, which is dramatic and well put together. But I still take issue with it. The whole Statue of Liberty’s head-thing was rediculous. It doesn’t seem to be a particularly likely occurence, even if a giant monster has just touched down to trash New York. And it seems so deliberately put in just as a mechanic to make the audience go “Oooh” that it loses all its impact. Then the immediate scenes of New York being destroyed are clearly taken from video footage of 9/11, which is either impressive on a technological level, or pretty tasteless and perhaps a little objectionable on a moral level – they are using an actual disaster where it actually happened again, just as a very basic mechanic to make the audience go “Ooooh”. Incidentally, isn’t it funny how nobody ever mentioned 9/11 the whole of the way through the film?

The film increasingly decends into stupidity to the point that by the end of the film, you could be watching a really awful B-movie on Cinemax or something. I take no issue with movies like that, they’re great when you haven’t paid to see them and they know how dumb they are. Cloverfield takes itself very seriously though, and I did pay to see it. A lot of the stupidity that really flattens any immersion revolves around ‘bad science’, which I’m going to leave an entire section to since there’s so much of it, but there are other things too. Characters often make incredibly unlikely and stupid decisions just as a reason to drive the action forward. The monster shows up just when they least expect it to – but when the audience most expects it too, unless they haven’t ever seen an action movie in their lives. You almost expect one of the characters to give a Homer Simpson-like “Doh!” after they run down a pitch-black subway tunnel only to find that, whaddaya know, there’s a massive bunch of aliens behind them. But it’s ok, cos guess what? There’s a door right next to them! That’s lucky! And then, it connects to an army field hospital! Jeez if they had gone down that tunnel 30 seconds before or after when they did, they never would have been so lucky!  

It is not a good film. The basis for any story at all is that the guy (Rob Hawkins is it?) is trying to find the girl who just dumped him after a desperate phone call, in Manhattan which is evidently the new ’stomping ground’ for a big monster from outer space. Apart from the reason that it wouldn’t be nearly as exciting if it did, why does the monster never leave Manhattan? Never explained. Why does the monster have such a massive chip on its shoulder? Never explained, alluded to or even guessed at. What did the main characters learn by the end? That a monster that is no more than a plot device for a story that is no more than “Girl dumps man, man finds girl, girl and man make up, girl and man die” is no monster at all. Just, effectively, a guy in a rubber suit jumping on lots of cardboard cut-outs of buildings. Though of course the guy is in one of those blue anamatronic suits now and all the buildings are computer generated. 

And most irritatingly of all, we don’t even see the if the monster dies or not! Cheap movies with lots of explosions and aliens are great, but generally speaking, even if humans aren’t winning, those explosions aren’t very entertaining when they don’t do anything! Think Starship Troopers or the Tremors movies. They are good wholesome brainless movies about humans and monsters. When humans are absolutely powerless it sucks all the fun out of it - which is fine when there is some deeper more significant theme being considered, e.g, War of the Worlds, Alien or even King Kong. but as I think is pretty obvious, nobody in the development of this film considered it worth implanting any sort of statement about anything into this film.

Bad Science in Cloverfield

Well, there is too much of it. Far too much of it.

Let’s start with the monster. Ok, I have no qualms with a giant monster, it’s logically possible. It’s got… a number of legs. That’s ok. It’s got tentacles. Haven’t they all? It’s a big pink squishy tripod, basically, without the deathray. Incidentally, I do think they way the monster is introduced is done very well, even quite far into the film you still don’t know what it really looks like. It is quite scary. Well, until the end when you do get to see it and it isn’t nearly as ugly as you were expecting.

Basically though, the problem is that a monster that was that big, operating under Earth’s gravity, would require a lot of energy to keep going. Apart from one of the characters near the end of the film, it doesn’t appear to ‘eat’ anything. How does it take energy in? How does it keep walking, and roaring, and dropping lots of little aliens out of its rear end? It must be burning a hefty number of calories. Perhaps one argument would be that it can somehow transfer kinetic energy through its ’skin’ thereby gaining the ability to keep functioning – thus making all those explosions that keep ricocheting of it an ample supply of food. But think about it – an organism that needed to constantly hit itself against stuff to gain energy would not last very long in the evolutionary chain, would it? Eventually it’s going to injure itself quite badly, or just plain run out of things to hit to get enough energy to do stuff. Specially if it has been travelling through space for a fair while.

The other main problem with the monster is that it just can’t be that invincible. Ok, so munitions just keep bouncing off its somehow impenetrable hide, but it’s got a big mouth, and eyes, and a nose (I think it does anyway) and those funny little gill things. Are you telling me not a single stray bullet would have hit it in the eye? I’m not going to believe it’s got bulletproof eyes, that’s just stupid. And not a single piece of shrapnel went down one of its gill-holes? That would have done some damage surely.

Perhaps the most rediculous thing about the big monster is the fact that it clearly breathes, using aforementioned gills. Assuming they have any biological or evolutionary function at all, that would have been its Achilles’ heel. It’s pretty hard to breathe in a firestorm, you know, the fire takes away all the oxygen, suffocating our monster here. But assuming that it didn’t, and this is perhaps a grievous oversight of the U.S. military, you could just dump some anthrax or some such on its head and there you go. Bish bash bosh, job’s a good ‘un, home in time for tea. It’s a space monster, it has no immunity to microbes from our planet, let alone artificial nerve agents. Take away the air, replace it with something much more unfriendly and it’s Humanity 1,  Space Monsters 0. 

Now let’s have a look at those funny little things that drop out of it’s… arse, for wont of a better word. These ‘things’ (from here on referred to as “poop spiders”), these poop spiders are also quite silly. Never mind the fact that they are just minature versions of the bugs from Starship Troopers with a couple of extra legs, there is much more wrong with them than that.

They start life tucked away safely on “It”, the big monster, and then drop a good 100 meters down to the ground. However, hand an iron bar to your average woman in her late twenties and she’ll have it beaten to a pulp in a couple of swings. I’ve always been under the impression that being hit a couple of times with an iron bar, even really hard, is going to do a lot less damage than being dropped to the ground from 100 metres up in the air. The original fall to the ground would easily be the end of the average poop spider. They maybe crazed invaders from outer space, but the laws of physics still apply wherever you are in the universe.

Also, I question the evolutionary purpose of poop spiders. Why shed a whole lot of small creatures that then go running round biting things and making them explode? Haven’t you just wiped out the entire food source for your species? Oh but of course they are space aliens – and probably vegetarian or something. However that still doesn’t explain their single-minded determination to go around killing everything, does it? It sure is a waste of energy to run around and kill stuff for no reason. For me, the reality of poop spiders is negligable. 

So the aliens are highly unconvincing. What about humans? We’ll leave tediously-poor-decision-making-for-the-sake-of-plot-continuation to one side, as this has already been dealt with. I think possibly the most appalling example of bad science by humans in this movie is when they finally make it up the wonky condominium and find the hero’s girlfriend, like all silly, feminine, weak and pathetic women in American action films, impaled pretty seriously on a big iron spike. Well if you will leave big iron spikes lying around in your apartment luv… Anyway, there she is, impaled, barely conscious unable to tell if her hero is real or an hallucination. She’s been there for hours. So what do they do? Lift her off the spike, help her to her feet and within ten minutes she’s running around at top speed bashing up poop spiders here, there and everywhere. Did nobody once stop and think that was a little unrealistic? Aside from the severe blood loss she would have suffered, that open wound would have been more than a little painful, one suspects, especially after her so-called friends just took a great big iron spike and wrenched it through her body. I think it was after this I really lost all interest in this film, it seemed to dispense with any semblance of reality after this point, which was completely at odds with the whole ‘filmed through a video camera’ aesthetic.  

But let’s consider that camera for a minute shall we? It’s a pretty amazing piece of kit. I’m not sure where they got it from but it’s awesome machine. You can leave it running for hours without needing to charge it. You can drop it, let it get eaten by a giant space monster and carry it in a helicopter that is flying higher than the average New York scyscraper only to be chewed on by a giant space monster, fall several hundred metres to the ground get caught up in the resulting explosion and it still keeps going! Then, after all this, the tape will still work correctly after a near-direct hit from some of the world’s most advanced military hardware and (possibly although never directly explained) even a hit from nuclear weapons! That’s amazing!

And of course let’s not forget the mobile phone that works on uncharged batteries you get get from your local electronics shop, that’s pretty impressive as well.

Reasons to be cynical 

It’s fair to say I haven’t been following any of the hype surrounding this film. Of the small amount of stuff I have read about it, it is a little disappointing. It’s being billed as a film for the ‘Youtube generation’ or some such nonsense:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7193692.stm

And to be honest, it is obvious that what the director really means is that he got this idea to take a Youtube video and turn it into a movie that would be interesting enough to make people want to sit through two hours of it. There really isn’t too much to it. As for “living through your wildest fears,” it’s not scary, beyond the fancy camera work, there is no story, there’s nothing to engage you other than the increasingly flawed and rediculous gimmicks and plot devices. It’s just a boring creature-feature from 50 odd years ago done like a viral video to connect with ‘the kids’ of the 21st century, whoever and wherever they may be.

If you want to see a genuinely scary, well thought out film about disaster and apocalypse with genuinely impressive camera-work, this would not be it. I would recommend Children of Men or something like that but I get the impression it’s a bit too ‘grown up’ for Cloverfield’s intended audience. Oh well.

So those are my thoughts on Cloverfield. One thing still bugs me though: why is it even called Cloverfield? 

December – January. Existentialist angst.

Ok, the move is complete. Everything that was originally on Myspace is now here… for better of worse….

 Better by the looks of things though eh?

Before I start though, I think it’s important to mention that this blog comes to you on something of a sad day; Culture 1 Dance festival, Bangkok’s first outdoor dance festival featuring David Morales, Stanton Warriors, John 00 Flemming, Marco V, Brian Cross, a whole load of other people you would be amazed are still doing the rounds, all that Dudesweet malarky (that I still haven’t got round to checking out) and so much else is on today.

But why is that sad? Surely I should be very bloody happy that that’s all happening, and I would be, if I was going. I could blame work, Culture 1 is 4pm – 1 am and I don’t finish work till 6:30 (get home 7:30, shit, shower, shave 8:30, eat dinner 9:00, get down to Bang Na 10:30-ish thereby missing most of it), but I could still see some of what was going on. I could blame the fact (I love that phrase ‘blame the fact’. How can you blame a bloody ‘fact’? Nonsense) that I have nobody to go with again, but after missing Plump DJs that isn’t enough to stop me, although it wouldn’t be all that great all on my own, has to be said. But the real clincher is the fact (there we go again) that I simply don’t have the money. Even doing it on the cheap it’d be 1500 Baht, which shouldn’t be a lot of money, but to me, right now, it is. And now I feel angry and miserable.

It’s a bugger. And it’s also symptomatic of a general trend in my life at the moment. I guess I have an extremely high tolerance for boredom and mentally at least, quite a high pain threshold. I can really get by depriving myself of a lot of fun and excitement, but the couple of years or so, as anyone who had read this blog would be aware, I’ve just been taking the piss in that respect. I mean I just don’t do anything anymore. Enjoying yourself is a vital part of living right? But it just never happens to me. Why is this?

Maybe it’s just because it’s Bangkok. There’s so much temptation on offer the only way to deal with it is burying your head in the sand and trying to ignore it. Waking up knowing you didn’t do anything stupid the night before comes as a relief sometimes, especially when you live somewhere where it’s so easy to do.

Maybe, partly, I’ve just been beaten in to submission by a combination of events, bad luck and no money. It’s tough to keep going when you spend so long at work, you have no mates, no cash and your girlfriend keeps flaking on you when you want to go out for this long.

Oh well. And did you know there’s a dj competition coming up soon over here? Well, without decks and or access to practicing with them, I’m out of it aren’t I? More excitement and good times being waved in your face while you can do nothing about it.

Sorry. lol never blog when you’re feeling pissed off!

So er… yes. Where were we? December. Well, not very exciting I’m afraid. The first couple of weeks were spent doing relatively little here, work dried up and not much happened. Bought all my Christmas presents at Chatuchak in one afternoon. Got to love that place haven’t you? I returned to the UK on the 13th, my little sister’s birthday, via Etihad who are… alright but not nearly as good as Emirates etc. Their music collection has lots of bizarre entries like the Pet Shop Boys and Erasure. Didn’t listen to them.

So I got back on the evening of the 13th, expecting it to be much more of a shock to the system than it really was. Had a nice sleep in my lovely bed, wasn’t capable of a lot else, and woke up the next day, ready to travel up to Manchester for a Team Handsome reunion. The very next day! I was impressed with myself. Four hour train journey, better than I was expecting, met up with Tom and Ed and had a very pleasant time. Met Tom’s new girlfriend and briefly a real-life Frank Gallagher came up to us in a bar and accused us of spreading rumours that he had been sleeping with prostitutes. As if we would muddy the good name of a greasy, drunk, unshaven stranger who came up to us with the intention of starting a fight!

Perhaps unfortunately the chance for Team Handsome to prove themselves on the field of battle was passed over and Frank buggered off. Tom then made a startling revelation about some footballers that would be best left unmentioned on here, and we all laughed. The next day was spent shopping in the day and partying in the night. Fan-fuckin-tastic. By Sunday morning, 22 hours of travelling and a weekend of partying were catching up with me slightly, and by the time I went home I was no longer in a condition to continue functioning as a normal human being, although fortunately this returned a couple of days later.

The rest of my time at home was spent relaxing and preparing for Christmas, which was over very quickly. I got an Mp3 player, but being my maverick self I went for a Creative Zen Stone Plus (think that’s all of it) as opposed to an Ipod. It’s already threatening me with not working but otherwise very good.

After Christmas I met up with Bob, Simon and Andrew, who I don’t think I’ve seen in a good 5 years and it was really ace to see them all doing well for themselves and catch up on old times. Hopefully this time we’ll be able to keep in touch using the wonders of Facebook and our mutual love of rubbish movies.

New Years completely fell through in an appallingly typical way, but there was some good that peversely came out of the situation. I spent the evening at home with the parents and my little sister. We went for an Indian, I had lamb peshwari which I now know makes you fart. A lot. But flatulence aside it was really nice to spend the time with the family, and wake up on New Years Day in my own bed at a reasonable hour not having spent any money and not being rediculously hungover.

The next few days were spent, well, faffing about really, before I made an almost entirely uneventful trip back to Thailand. Unfortunately the last leg of the flight was full of people from all over northern Europe with colds and flu, so I was afflicted with a terrible throat infection that requires all sorts of prescription drugs that cost way more than the 400 Baht my piss-take medical insurance will pay for.

Since then… well… nothing. Nothing at all. The other day I got to work at 10am for my first class – the next one being 2-4pm and the last one 7-8:30. Of course half an hour beforehand the middle class cancelled leaving me with a gobsmacking 7 hour gap (in total) in my working day. By that stage I didn’t really have the time or the inclination to go all the way home and come back again. A boring fucking day like I have never known, that was.

And today a similar thing has happened. Just to leave me with more time to think about my woes and mock me with the thought of the fun I might have known. God I’m depressed… lol.

 Anyway, that’s things as they are up to now. Hopefully they’ll get better soon eh?

Mat

Anatomy of a websearch: how people found my blog this week.

There are some twisted souls out there… I think either the 13th or 14th were the most interesting days

Search Terms for 7 days ending 2008-01-17

Today

Search	Views
go back to days november	2
teaching rant thailand	1
i hate teaching esl in thailand	1

Yesterday

Search	Views
Pattaya Hotels	2
what do thailand people wear on a normal	1
things about thai women	1

2008-01-15

None

2008-01-14

Search	Views
hardcore isan	1
thailand white people	1
post-op-ladyboys	1
thailand – things to do/see	1
i hate thai people	1
thing to see in thailand	1
I hate Thailand	1

2008-01-13

Search	Views
johnny bermuda	1
thai “kii maa”	1
gay blog samui	1
Pattaya	1

2008-01-12

Search	Views
hua hin	1

2008-01-11

None

October. – November 6, 2007

There’s not much to say about October really. I didn’t go on holiday anywhere, I carried on working the same as always, i.e., on my own and sitting about not doing a whole lot, and not much really happened.

A couple of things of varying importance did though. Firstly, and probably most importantly, Looksorn’s application for university in the UK really got going. We’ve got a couple of universities that sounded really interested and the UCAS form is pretty much done. The fact that she has no formal English language qualifications doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem really – I guess most universities would be much more interested in the cash that a mature overseas student would bring them than how easily they could study.

It’s all pretty exciting, I’m not sure where it will all lead, but it looks as though we could be back in the UK for the long haul from next summer – which may/may not be a good thing. There’s obviously a lot of things I like about Thailand that I would miss, and there’s a lot of things about the UK that I dont miss. But a lot of the good things about Thailand I have to admit are really hypothetical - the idea of going out to all these fantastic bars and clubs full of gorgeous women, the idea of meeting all these crazy people, the idea of having loads of money while living in Bangkok, the idea of travelling – these are all things that are way beyond my financial and recreational means, and will be for a long time to come. I’m stuck in a rut here teaching English in this half-arsed language school and going nowhere fast. The sooner I get out of it the better. And then that’s just me. Studying in the UK is something that would be so good for Looksorn, such an amazing opportunity, and I really genuinely want that for her, so I don’t think the sacrifice will be too bad.

And of course there are maybe one or two things that aren’t that bad about living in the UK. Nobody said we have to stay there for ever, right?

As for other stuff this last month – the other week I got to Central in the taxi, opened the door to get out and fucking motorcycle taxi went straight into it. Retard. His passenger ran off pretty quick, just leaving me, him and the taxi driver – you might have experienced that feeling you get after a road accident before, the words “OH SHIT!!!” just run through your mind over and over – although this time of course, I didn’t really speak the same language as anyone else involved which heightened the panic further. Although not badly injured Khun Motorcye had a look in his eye of great anger and injustice – I felt kinda bad that I had helped to wreck a relatively poor person’s main source of income (i.e. his bike), but really the way I saw it (and still see it) if you’re riding a motorcycle and the taxi ahead of you pulls up to the side of the road and stops, and you’re close enough to see there’s someone in the back, you should really expect them to get out the car, so driving in between them and the pavement is pretty fucking stupid.

So I turned my back and walked away hoping to God they didn’t come after me. Which they didn’t. Khun Motorcye’s main source of anger was probably that he really wanted to try and get me to give him loads of money in compensation, but couldn’t speak any English. And of course this being Thailand, more specifically Bangkok, the quicker we can all sweep such incidents under the carpet and completely forget about them the better it will be for everybody. So it has been.

I still get anxious walking past all the motorcycle taxis outside Central though.

Last incident of any note for October – I didn’t go to see Plump DJ’s at Q Bar, which was a real shame, I probably should have in hindsight. I didn’t really have anyone to go with, wasn’t quite fussed enough to go on my own (well… maybe a bit scared of going on my own too… I’m sure you’re all familiar with that bit in the Odyssey with Odysseus and the Sirens right?) and wasn’t sure I really had the money to fund the expidition anyway. So I resolved probably the morally and financially acceptable thing to do was to wait until Halloween.

I remember going to Q Bar for Halloween last year, back in the days when house music DJ’s still knew how to play stuff that wasn’t just electro-based, and had a rollicking good time with just me and Looksorn. So we endeavoured to go there again.

Well, Looksorn didn’t finish work till 10pm, we didn’t eat dinner till about 11, and we finally made it to Q Bar about some time after 12. So far so shit. I’d been to the gym for ages that day too so was very tired and in desperate need of listening to some good music (California WOW!’s music policy is somewhere between cheap (and I mean cheap) dance remixes of American pop combined with brutal ‘tranny house’ – I don’t know if that’s a real genre, but it should be).

Well we got in and, usual crowd of dirty old men (AAAHHH!!! The dad-dancing!!! Make it stop, for the love of God make it STOP!!!), and divinely attractive Thai girls (most of whom are, has to be said, high-class escorts on their night off – but you’re drunk, and they are divinely attractive). I don’t know what the DJ at Q Bar was on, but he was sheeeeeeeiiite!! Even having not gone out properly in ages and being able to call myself a DJ under only the most spurious of pretences, I could tell that he was a shit DJ.

It wasn’t house music, it was some awful bootleg mash-up night. It was like 2manydjs gone horribly, horribly off the rails. The guy on the decks seemed completely unaware that music existed outside of the American charts from the last 10 years, and how many fucking times can one man recycle Billy Jean by Michael Jackson in one hour?!

Suffice to say a good time was not had. Though of course it was still nice to get away from stuff and spend time getting drunk with Looksorn which is always a pleasure. We didn’t stay long, since we both had long days the next day, were tired, and having spent time gawking at all the drunk models, silly old men (one of whom brought some six year old Thai girl into the club… er… scuse me?) celebrities, gay dancers and all the menagerie of the Bangkok’s nightlife, we felt it was time to go home at a fairly unimpressive 1am.  

And so, with Halloween over, October finished, and that was that.

Oh yeah and I bought my plane tickets – I’m coming home 13th December to 4th January. Hmm… I wonder how many people that information is directed at will actually read it…

So yes. That was that. The forecast for November is…. well, dunno bit early to say, but I have already been up to Chiang Rai which was a pleasant if bloody cold experience. I have some pictures – you’ll just have to hold your breath till next time though.

Anyway, that’s it from me for now. Back whenever I get bored and run out of things to do.

Mat   

10 things I love about Thailand, 10 things I hate about Thailand – October 24, 2007

Does anyone ever get the feeling that they’re too old for Myspace? Well, I guess I literally am, being all of 26 and everything. Just logging in you get this voice in the back of your head saying “Well this is shit. Isn’t it, really?”. I guess testament to this is that pretty much anyone I ’really’ know seems to have chucked Myspace in too, a long time ago. Don’t blame them. Oh well, I guess despite this I started the blog here, so here it should remain. 

Talking of the blog, looks like the ‘furore’ over the July & August back-to-back issue has died down now, after getting 30-40 + views a week, I’m now back down to… zero. Good! Doesn’t look like September had nearly the impact that the previous two months did. And if I’m honest, this month isn’t really shaping up to be even as exciting as last month – but I’ll hold off until the month’s finished, just in case. You never know.

And so, in the absence of anything anecdotal to write about, I thought I’d bore you with some other shit. Today’s edition comes inspired by a post from the discussion board of the Thailand network on Facebook. I would provide a link but because you already need to be logged into Facebook to reach it, you can either find it yourselves by going on to Facebook, or if you’re some Myspace random who’s ‘too cool’ to be on Facebook, then…. I dunno. I don’t really care.

It’s not like it’s a very interesting thread ok? You’re not missing out!

Anyway. The thread is called 10 things you love about Thailand, and 10 things you hate about Thailand. Given posting in that thread would involve typical weboard arguments, misunderstandings and most of all being completely ignored, I though I would share it with everybody here. After all, what else is a blog for other than being a gobshite?

These things aren’t in any order by the way. Since I love/hate them for different reasons, it seemed a bit hard to put them into any order.

Ten things I love about Thailand:

Women - It’s no surprise, and maybe for some people a bit depressing to see that the first thing a white guy in Thailand says he likes are the girls. I know. I don’t mean ‘I like girls’ in a purely dirty way, although, if forced into a corner (or not even that) I would have to say that being in Bangkok you do see some of God’s finest creations walking around on a daily basis. You want a link to explain further? ok… I’ll see what I can find… here we are, have a rummage through this one http://www.madoo.com/starpic/

But it’s not just that. For whatever reasons, Thai women are just extremely easy to get on with, and fun to be around. They are passionate and fun-loving, glorious in their own sense of empowered femininity… Ok, this is beginning to sound like a load of cliched bollocks. Obviously not all Thai women are that great to be around, but they are generally open, outgoing and friendly and there is never a dull moment with (most of) them. I’m not gonna jump around saying they’re perfect, but they ain’t half bad. And they know how to party. 

Food - Ok, if I’m honest, I don’t like a lot of Thai food, it’s too spicy, it makes me ill, or it just tastes ‘funny’. Some of it is amazing though. And while it’s nearly all the same kind of thing (meat with rice, meat with noodles, the odd carrot thrown in) it all tastes so damn interesting. I’ve never seen a love of food like you see in this country, and it’s a wonder to behold. Plus if you ever get tired of Thai food, there’s plenty of amazing food from other countries on offer. And then there’s so much incredibel fruit here (green mangoes!)

Beaches and islands - Ok, this one doesn’t need too much explanation. Anyone who comes to Thailand is always blown away by the scenery, whether down south in Krabi, around Hua Hin, down near Koh Chang or on Koh Samui. Amazing. Also the nightlife on Samui is amazing, if you can make it past the gogo bars and Green Mango (which is shite, actually – unlike actual green mangoes which are amazing – see above).

Friendliness - It’s the thing they are famous for among tourists, and the thing they are famous for faking amongst expats, but I really admire the sheer determination of Thai people to maintain a calm and pleasant society. It’s a combination of many factors, mainly a strong sense of eastern pragmatism and the idea that whatever happens in public is everyone’s business, and it works so damn well. They may well be ‘faking’ the whole ‘friendly’ thing sometimes, but who cares? A society where people are freindly to each other because they think it’s the best thing to do rocks. Especially in Bangkok, you can see this society being degraded all around you, and it is a genuine shame. 

Isan - Ok, apart from people who are native to Thailand and/or are from other Asian hierarchical societies, who couldn’t love Isan? The people are crazy, the food is amazing and it’s beautiful. Not the most exciting place in the world, and downright terrifying sometimes, but if there’s one region of Thailand who’s culture will outlast all others and resist the tide of westernisation, it’s Isan.

Bangkok’s nightlife - Much has been said about the nightlife of Bangkok. But it is just incredible. The unbelievably sordid and the unbelievably glamourous reside side by side in a way that doesn’t seem like it should work, and yet it does. So well. There’s nothing you can’t find here somewhere – hang on… maybe that’s a bad thing… Oh well, stop thinking, down another bottle of Sangsom, keep talking to these random strangers you’ve just made friends with and head to the nearest illegal after-hours joint! The party never stops (specially since all the ‘illegal after-hours joints’ are actually run by corrupt police officials or the mafia)!

Ok, yeah, I think it has to be said that there are some extremely dodgy (morally and health-wise) places in this city too, but I think I should probably save a description of them for another time… 

The history - Thai history. Amazing. Like the history of every country in Europe all rolled into one. Go look it up on wikipedia or something. But it’s one hell of a story. Alternatively watch historical epic movie Suriyothai or even better The Legend of King Naresuan. Brilliant. And then of course there are the epic ruins left behind in Ayutthaya, Sukothai, Lopburi and all across Isan, which are… epic, for want of a better word. 

Sense of taste - There’s no denying that Thai people have a really good sense of taste. If people want to be trendy they won’t all rush out to go and get the latest look and end up looking like a bunch of pricks (a la UK), they’ll actually make sure that whatever they wear and whatever they do, they’ll look good. Really good. For a Thai person, there’s nothing worth doing unless you can look good doing it. And do it good, too.

Cultural ‘rawness’ - Bit of a difficult one to explain, this one. In the UK emotional strength is defined as the ability to bury your emotions deep inside and forget you ever even had them. Avoid all situations which might lead to strong emotions where possible. The Thai definition is riding out strong emotions, learning to control yourself while experiencing them and learn from what happened. In Thailand, they have no qualms about showing dead bodies on the news. Deal with it. No film certificates. The earlier you deal with it, the better. There is very limited interest in health and safety. Because you’re just supposed to go through whatever happens and deal with it.

I’m not gonna say one way is better than the other (although we all know a lot of other white folks would), because there is a logic to Thai fatalism. It’s a refreshing difference to the British way, and one that give much more practice at dealing with the inevitability of emotions. But then of course I do believe in keeping a stiff upper lip wherever possible, old boy, naturally.

Attitude towards westerners - You have to love the way that Thai people treat white folks. It seems unfathomable to most white people that Thais should treat us with such servility up front and then walk away from it laughing at our attitudes. But that’s how it is. We have this culturally ingrained view that Europeans brought enlightenment to the world, we made it what it is today, and without us those funny little yellow people wouldn’t know shite. But those ‘funny little yellow people’ see us getting angry over nothing, making fools of ourselves and falling for the lies of peasant-girls-turned-prostitutes on a regular basis and think: “how can they be that bloody stupid?”

Remember guys, you maybe the same colour as Einstein, but that doesn’t make you a genius. Which is precisely what every Thai person thinks when you start ‘acting up’ at them and treating them disrespectfully.

Ten things I hate about Thailand : 

Pattaya - “Costa del Sol in Thailand”, expatriate residents and visitors will proudly tell you. “White people own this town, and have made it their own”. Towering hotels and condominiums line the neatly made streets with perfect pavements and roads, western restaurants such as Jim’s Irish Pub (Jim being from Essex and never having visited Ireland, obviously), Jergen’s German Pub, and Sven’s Swedish Pub sit next to sprawling plazas filled with small bars and pool tables. This is clearly a town awash with money and sex. Thai people are in the minority here: it’s all about the grossly overweight retirees plodding along next to their latest Thai wife/prostitue complaing loudly about “F*ckin Thai people, f*ckin fick in’t they? F*ckin lazy too!”

At night the town comes alive as the girly bars swing into action, the tourists decend on them armed with their entire pensions, get horrifically drunk, barfine a girl (or two, or three) and indulge in their most horrible fantasy. 

Everything I hate about Thailand in one place. Though I should point out, some of the hotels aren’t that bad, and some of the ‘normal’ bars aren’t bad either. Finding them’s a fucker though. And at the end of the day, as much as these fat white bastards believe they own Pattaya, everyone else knows that the Thai mafia really own Pattaya, and are farming said fat white bastards for every satang they have.    

The weather - Tropical downpours 8 months of the year, unbearable heat for 2, and that leaves you 2 good months that you can actually leave the apartment without sweating your balls off or getting soaked. And then the smog and humidity in Bangkok sometimes…

Corruption – Corruption is a word that leaps out at you here. It’s everywhere. The precepts of a law-abiding western society have been placed on a consequentialist, pragmatist eastern society, and the result is a bloody mess. You naturally indulge in corruption in day to day life, it’s the only way to get anything done. Thousands of expats have come here trying to do things ‘by the book’ and have ended up out on their arse. Personal relationships matter much more than your skills. Asking those above you in society for ‘favours’ is natural and expected, fiddling figures for your own personal gain is again, expected. By western standards, it’s bad, really bad. But by Thai standards, it’s just the way things have always been done. And who are we to judge that?  

It’s just when it gets to massive corruption that sees the rich getting far too rich, everyone else suffering, and most of all when it impacts on you, you kinda wish things weren’t the way they are.

Pollution – Hideous. Not just pollution though, but lack of environmentalism. There’s so much junk in Bangkok’s canals. No bloody bins anywhere. Expressways throughout Thailand are covered in crap. It’s ok if it’s just the odd bottle or whatever, but there are mountains of it. Sort it out.

Attitude towards work - Pleasing the boss and not causing trouble come first. Hard work, efficiency and organisation are a long way down the list. God have mercy on all the dumbass expats who have been here for years and still haven’t figured it out (there are certainly enough of them). It does get grating when you do actually want to a) do something well and b) be recognised for it.

The fact that they don’t teach kids any analytical skills at school - It’s a well acknowledged problem in Thailand. People can do calculus, but get them to add 2 and 2 together without a calculator and you’ll have them scratching their heads for hours. This has serious repercussions in daily life. Just trying to figure something out for yourself evidently becomes extremely difficult, and tens of millions of people all over Thailand struggle with this issue. The other week I asked an adult student why global warming was bad and they only answer they could come up with was “Because everyone says so”.

Why does it happen? Because at school, kids are taught ‘2 +2 = 4′. They never have to work it out for themselves, nobody ever asks “if you take 2 of something, and 2 more of the same thing, how many do you have?” This method continues up through until they leave school. Not good huh? Don’t worry about the country’s ruling elite though, they all send their kids to international schools where they get taught normally.

Other white expats - There is so much to dislike about so many other white people here. Whether their reason for being in Thailand starts “Well, we saw The Beach and…” or they’re just here to use and (sexually) abuse the local population, or they have steadfastly refused to make any effort to understand or be part of Thai society, or they have made too much effort to do that, or they are proud of how disgustingly overpaid they are, there is just so much NOT to like!

Gay guys who think that just because you’re not out with your girlfriend right now you must be after some cock - Enough said. If you haven’t already, read my blog and you’ll see why I have a problem with this.

Old women who have gay friends and think that just because you’re not out with your girlfriend right now you must be after some cock, and try to set you up with their gay friends - Again, this is just awkward. And again, read my blog if you haven’t already. I admire Thai womens’ attitudes and openess towards sex, I really do, but this is just rediculous.

People who don’t even bother asking if you’re gay and think that you must be after some cock - We’ve all been there. Well, at least I have, and I didn’t really enjoy it. Again, read the blog.

Mat vs Myspace – May 30, 2007

Myspace: Come on Mat! Post a blog! You haven’t posted anything in ages!

Me: Eh up Myspace. Yeah… I dunno, not really in the mood at the moment.

Myspace: What? Are you kerrrrrazy? Post a blog! Come on! It’s what everybody’s doing! You’re in Thailand! That’s so mental! Everybody wants to know what you’ve been up to! Go on, tell all the cool people on Myspace what a great place Thailand is and make loads of friends and get loads of people to actually like you!

Me: See, now that’s the kind of attitude which really puts me off this whole “web 2.0″ stuff. It’s like all you’re saying is “Why don’t you make a really half-arsed attempt to become…

Myspace: Famous? Well duh! Everybody who takes part in the glorious cultural revolution of web 2.0 shall be promised fame for doing absolutely sh*te all! And that’s what everybody says in the international media, so it must be true!

Me: Fuck me Myspace, you don’t half talk bollocks sometimes…

Myspace: Well it’s not just me is it? It’s not just Myspace. It’s everybody all over the world, who blogs and dicks about in front of a camera and makes their own music! These people shall inherit the future, Mat, these people! Look at Lilley Allen! Lilley fucking Allen! Look at… that guy… from LA who started blogging about Hollywood parties and became friends with Paris Hilton! Paris fucking Hilton!!!! That… guy! Every minute of every hour of every day some bored, boring nobody is being plucked from obscurity by magazines for interviews, having their lives turned into amazing books and movies, being signed up by record companies and being made into a somebody, crossing the line from being a twat that nobody ever listened to into a bold, beautiful, shining star of….

Mat: er… yeah I think I’ve heard enough thanks. I just started this blog with the intention of keeping friends up-to-date with stuff going on where I am, because frankly I was too lazy to email them, and blatantly so were they. Now everywhere I look its like “OMFG WEB 2.0!!!!11111oneone”, my blog should apparently be my shot at the big time and if I’m not trying to rack up as many readers as possible then I’m doing something wrong. What has web 2.0 really given us? It’s not a “cultural revolution” even if Time magazine says so. Balls to them! It’s just a chance for complete twats with a talent for eloquence to get their non-points about nothing across to other like-minded idiots. And Youtube? I dunno, Google lost a lot of my respect over the way they handled all those videos of the King Buhimbol. Just a ‘cultural challenge’ to Thailand? Piss off, learn some bloody manners, you cunts, and God forbid some corporate responsibility. 

Ok, so I’m not going to deny there’s a genuinely positive and productive side to all this web 2.0 stuff. And for the right people, i.e. professionals who can benefit in their work from it, it is extremely useful, to the point for them of being a virtual revolution. But since when was posting a public diary and filming some prick pulling your teacher’s pants down and posting it on the net a fucking revolution? Web 2.0 takes itself too seriously and while the international media is still agasp in awe at it, and there is no attempt to parody or criticise it, seriously or otherwise, the ‘recreational’ side of web 2.0 has as much cultural weight as any other fad. I remain unconvinced. I’ve been lurking round internet forums for long enough to know that 99% of internet users have no idea what they’re banging on about.

Myspace: but… famous! Come on! What the fuck’s wrong with you?! You’re British, you’re a nobody, why don’t you want to be famous?

Mat: Why the fuck should I? Famous for what? In Thailand, people can only become famous for being really good at something. If you want to be famous but you have no talent, nobody will pay attention. And you know what? That’s really refreshing. The benefits of an eastern culture! Jade Goody would never have made it here. And that’s really all I need to say about that isn’t it?

Myspace: But… you… oh you… prick!

Mat: Ok, ok, I’m sorry. I’m not trying to say that I don’t like you Myspace. I mean, ok I do find you a bit creepy and weird… I’ll keep blogging, but is it ok if I don’t care about the whole ‘famous’ thing? If I just ignore all the counters and the rankings and the hype?

Myspace: …….

Mat: Well… seems as though that’s as close as we’ll get to an agreement then eh? Oh well. Good enough for me.

Myspace: Prick.

Good Friends We’ve Had – February 9, 2007

Hi everyone. Bit of a sombre one this time I’m afraid, and a lazy one too, since it’s just an email I cut & pasted onto here. It’s my own email though, so I did actually write it… just something that hit me quite hard just before I came home back in December, and something that hasn’t been easy to talk about. So this is kinda ‘katharsis’, if you will. Is that the right word? I dunno… Still a good read anyway though, even if it is a bit lengthy. Never take your mates for granted.

Mat Luckins to gregor.young

Hey, glad to hear you’re enjoying yourself. Looksorn was quite taken aback by your comment about hot Argentinian women – she thought you might be (god forbid) suggesting they are more attractive than Thai women?! Of course I reassured her that was ‘impossible’… sorry yeah was reading your message on the new laptop in my apartment… I’m with you about Myspace, it’s not the best, I’ve got a facebook page as well if your on that… dunno if signing up for bebo as well might be a little bit of overkill… who knows might be bored enough some time soon. I’ve taught 4 hours since Monday, that’s how hectic work is at the moment.

As for Andrew, I’m glad someone managed to get the word out. I saw him at his ‘leaving work do’ – girls from the front desk + teachers and their girlfriends. Oh yes, that much fun. Didn’t really get much time to talk to him but he told me to give him a call since it was only a couple of days before I was going back to the UK with Looksorn for Christmas. So on my last day here I figured ‘yeah fuck it, might as well arrange to meet up this evening, I might never get to see him again’. Not like some sort of premonition or anything, just figured he’d be going back home for longer than me, and our paths wouldn’t be that likely to cross while I was there. And as you know, he is/was a somebody it is/was very difficult not to become good mates with.

So I gave him a call, went round to his apartment block that evening. I hadn’t seen him in a couple of days (which he had apparently spent with Tik doing pretty much nothing) and he seemed to have become so much more relaxed, and just so much happier than I had seen him in ages. He was really looking forward to spending the next couple of weeks relaxing before going home and seeing all his family and friends and everyone. We joked maybe going back to England would be like that scene in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves where Kevin Costner reaches the cliffs of Dover after escaping from the Middle East, and for some reason he always kept talking about how much he was really looking forward to walking round an abbey and the weather. We sat and chilled next to the pool with some American guy he knew from his apartment, who also seemed pretty cool, and then went up to his apartment – he was really keen to show me that football movie he always went on about… can’t remember the name of it, but its got that quote “You tryin to mug me off or summink? You tryin to make me look like a cunt in front of my fuckin pals?” and to be fair it was pretty funny when I saw it. Can’t remember for the life of me what we talked about, nothing especially exciting, just going home, girlfriends, joking about crap, the usual. Andrew and his American friend started getting the beers in, but I had to leave pretty early since I had to be up at 4am for my flight home. I got his email address and we decided to make the effort to meet up once he got back.

Well, I woke up the next morning, pretty excited to be going back. Got to the airport ok, was standing in the check-in queue about 6 when I got a call from Vincent. “Mat! Where are you?” At this point I was thinking you do NOT want me to come in to teach today?! I was about to make a ‘light hearted’ joke about it, but thank fuck I didn’t. “It’s Andrew! He’s dead! Andrew’s died!” Subtle as a fucking brick, Vince. But then what else would you expect from him really? He told me what happened, needless to say I was pretty freaked out by it. I guess he told you everything too. So with that knowledge in hand, I embarked on my 18 hour journey back home. The first 2 hours I listened to the Koran being sung in Arabic I was so miserable. And on the second half of the flight I had some sexpat from Pattaya getting hammered and telling me all his stories (which were for the most part exactly the same as every other sexpat’s) but he was a pretty decent guy at heart, and did a good job of taking my mind off stuff for a bit. Fucking smelly though.

One thing that struck me was the time Andrew was teaching that guy and asked him what he would do if he had 24 hours left to live, and his student kept saying ’sleep’, and naturally Andrew just replied “yeah…but no.” It’s kinda ironic that he spent his own last 48 hours doing pretty much nothing, and he seemed to be the happiest I’d ever seen him, and to be honest, if he had known that he had to go when and how he did, I can’t see him doing anything differently.

Me and Looksorn made it to the funeral while we were back home, it was a really nice service. But seeing all his family and friends from back home (and there were a lot of them) was kinda weird, they were all gutted, naturally, they hadnt seen him in a year. But it was almost as though they knew a different person to the guy we knew. And there was just so much stuff that just seemed inappropriate to tell them, it seemed better to let them remember him as they knew him, maybe thats what he would have wanted. We didn’t stay afterwards, even though there was a ‘do’, it was all a bit emotional, and I kinda felt like an outsider to it all.

I know what you mean about trying to explain it all to people who never knew him, I had a similar problem when I got home. Even when I came back, people didnt really want to talk about it which didn’t help. I guess you just got to move on by your own sometimes…

Well, I guess that’s enough rambling from me… bloody hell there’s enough of it…. I keep trying to write short emails and I can never do it… sorry

Anyway, just thought you might want to know that he was aaaalright before he went. And if you ever want to go see him when youre back in the UK or whatever, I can give you the address. I dunno.

Anyway, hope everything is still good in Argentina, or wherever you are now

Mat

Inauspicious Beginnings…

Hello, my name is Mat, and I’m here because I’ve had enough of Myspace.

 For the past year I’ve been using Myspace blog to update people on the simply outrageous events of my screwball, hair-raising experiences living in Bangkok (yes, the one in Thailand). Ok, that’s half true. I live in Bangkok, but my life isn’t really that exciting. However, my blogs are apparently entertaining and well-written, so rather than post them on a site devoted to idiot American teenagers, I thought I’d up the age-range of my audience a bit and come here instead. It seems a bit more grown up, am I right? And people who don’t know me are occasionally interested in reading my blogs too, so you never know, you might get something out of it.

I’m a bit unsure of how to do this. I do want to move my entire blog over here so that everyone can read it and I don’t have the headache of coordinating a blog over two sites to deal with. And besides, how many of you would ever go on to Myspace to read a blog? I think the general plan is an episodic approch. It would be silly to bombard you with a year’s worth of blogging (it’s only about 15 posts really) all at once, since that way nobody will read any of it. So I guess I’ll move a post over every week or so, and then, who knows? Maybe a whole person might bother! Amazing!

Honestly, if that just seems a rediculous approach, I’m sorry. I’m a maverick who hasn’t had breakfast yet, and in this state I pull all sorts of crazy shit out of nowhere.

Well, that’s enough. Now, let’s see if I can figure out how to post this…