Spare Some Change Bro?

will.i.am is a campaign deus ex machina for Obama. Is Babs still campaigning for Hillary (oy vey)?

This is not an Obama endorsement, but he'd be more fun as president than John McCain (don't forget John Edwards was supported by the MWLLKR site). Obama's a lucky guy to have found good (and free) PR. There are lots of spoofs out there already including 'john.he.is' for John McCain which I was sent by my bro. There is also the well-circulated Obama's Top 10 List on Letterman as well as a seriously OTT MadTV clip of Hillary with 'jungle fever' wanting to serve under Obama - definitely NOT suitable for the easily shocked and offended (don't say I didn't warn you)...

Addendum: Here's a bunch of other new songs about Obama...

'Better Britney than Whitney'

I remember you used to say this to differentiate between crazy celebs like Whitney Houston who end up coked off their faces and marrying boy band has-beens and perky up and coming pop tarts like Britney Spears. Poor Britney, what went wrong? Can't help but feel sympathy for her because she is so freaking nuts. I remember back when she was savvy and sane enough to have made the video for Lucky (life imitating art...)
But over all it's a bad week to be a celeb, especially if you are Edison Chen (who, like Britney, has been reported to be suicidal this week, although much of these details are likely to just be salacious HK tabloid fever). Although porn-from-your-laptop is never something you want to leak out to the world, Edison has plenty of other things to be ashamed of like his bad R&B rapping in Cantonese. Oh yeah, and he owned a PINK MacBook. Edison was slated to be in the next Batman, but it looks like that film is cursed with bad luck.



p.s. Hey, doesn't any of this remind anyone of the internet photo-plot of Beyond Our Ken starring the very same afflicted Gillian Chung (and Daniel Wu)? IMDB plot outline reads: 'A month after Wai Ming broke up with Ken, she finds nude pictures of her on his website. To get back at him, she teams up with his new girlfriend'. You'd think she would have learned... more life imitating art.

p.s. no time now to plug most excellent HK director Pang Ho Cheung, maybe another time (see Isabella if you get a chance, saw it two years ago at HKFF and PHC was there with Chapman To)...

Insomnia and PEE

It used to be that if you couldn't sleep you would just lie there in the dark until some acceptable hour (e.g., 7am) when you could forgive yourself for getting up so early on a Saturday. Today is one of those days >:[ However, with the internet you can find out all sorts of interesting and entertaining things like North Korea's Pochonbo Electronic Ensemble (PEE for short - thank you Kaiju Shakedown). If this doesn't wake you up fully I don't know what will, it's like drinking 20 espressos at once with crack and then swimming naked through icy waters.

Do you think these guys are winning the war for communism in the world?

Just because...

Wong Kar-wai and Clive Owen. These were the good days before Blueberry Nights and the big Hollywood sellout (WKW signed on with Fox after all...). The other night someone complained to me that British men either look like Ricky Gervais in The Office or are prone to premature balding. Yes, but then there is Clive Owen who redeems everyone concerned. This was a BMW ad he made with Forest Whitaker and post-plastic surgery Mickey Rourke, the music is the fantastic song Unicorno sung by Charly Garcia Y Mercedes Sosa.

Yatta, yatta, yatta...

HOW can I NOT post this up in my memory palace? Al Gore may have won the Nobel, but this takes the cake! While the world was busy in 2001 with other less important things, Yatta was getting the word out on saving the enviornment. (How different the world might have been if the US Supreme Court had done a better job arbitrating the 2000 Presidential Elections).

Sugary C-Pop eye candy may cause blindness

Indulging in my love for kitsch, here's some news from the C-Pop front: Vic Zhou of now extinct boy band F4 fame has a new single 'I'm Not F4', which is SO bad I think F4 is glad he's not F4 (BTW - I cannot believe Jay Chou wrote this song and what's with C-Pop, big sweaters, and fingerless leather driving gloves?!). I once watched ALL of Meteor Garden 1 and 2 in rapid succession as background distraction while trying to make a deadline for work. 2am, 3am, and even 4am marathons later, all the work was done, my eyes were little squares, and my brain turned to Nutrasweet. The Japanese version Hana Yori Dango is much better.

Worth discovering are two Beijing bands: punk gone elctro NEW PANTS and CONVENIENCE STORE.

New Pants, Goodbye Disco (Inexplicably in English, fantastically low-budget chic).
Convenience Store, Silent Day (which sounded like 'Saturday' the first 10 times I heard it).

Also:
SUPER VC (I could only find this fan vid on Youtube)
And the now defunct band The Dada and Peng Tan's solo album Teen Spirit.

Thanks to my Super Sleuth Mom for the link: you can download these at Baidu - PC users beware of viruses and get a freaking Mac).