So really, if you think about it, you guys still love us. It’s that sinkhole you should set on fire! Without further adieu, I present this month’s shitbeat, The Black Keys. Maybe I’ve been watching too much Supernatural and thus, have begun to crave whiny electric guitar music accompanied by bouncing bikini clad women. Two things that Dean Winchester loves. I love that man.

So here’s an “unofficial” Black Keys video.

And an official video.

7D SHITASTIC I TELL YA.

That’s right, the same bootiful camera owned by both Patty The Pot Potastic and Han the Han Solo. Better get on that bandwagon now.

Remember this fated post back in December? I spoke about how with all the quality music acts coming to our hot and cold, strangeland island of Singapore, there needed to be more TRASH for crying out loud. I mentioned that Peaches should come to Singapore to shock and perturb local men by asking them to impeach her bush while looking like a butter factory ape. Well boys, it’s time to get perturbed, the technogods have spoken and number 2 on my list, Peaches, is coming and performing at Zirca. It’s cool. But eurgh, it’s at Zirca. But hay, it’ll be trashier than trash I suppose. Squee!

Alas, to accompany this short post, I give you… lazertits.com! No explanation required.

Tavi Gevinson, 13 year old fashion blogger of www.thestylerookie.com

Then there are some young’ns who luckily, have the smarts to get it right. Way more than I had it right back then anyway. About a year ago, Tavi Gevinson, 13 year old blogger, was featured in New York Times. Now, she’s practically a reknowned fashion blogger. At 13. One wonders how appropriate this is but once you read her, you’ll realize, it’s totally appropriate. The girl has smarts. Take this post for example. The girl actually refers to Dave Eggers and discusses the future of fashion blogging in detail.

Here’s an excerpt from one of her blogposts:

“You know, in the beginning of The September Issue, Anna Wintour says she thinks some people mock fashion because they are intimidated by it. As much as I do admire Wintour, (and I still think she wouldn’t be criticized for being cold if she was a man, but this rant is for another time) I rarely agree with what she says, but this is an exception. Yeah, it’s snobby, but you know what? So is turning up your nose at a runway collection because you thinks it’s weird and you just don’t get it. This, in fact, makes the nose-turner-upper not too different from those horrible “fashion” magazines – dismissing something because it’s strange. How very narrow-minded.”

With that, Tavi says what I always want to say about the haters of fashion. Yes, I mean you Professor Meridel and Chan Pohling. It’s honestly quite invigorating to have a teenager say it all and say it well.

I was discussing with a friend where Singapore is kinda at, at this point of time. And we agreed it’s kinda like 50s America here now. Everything is modern, functioning, and pleasant. But points of view are pretty much still riding in the narrow lane. But seeing my cousin get into photography at 15, and the country really just embarking on embracing more than just a wad of money and so called idea of familial happiness is a little encouraging. Hopefully our generation will toss out bras and burn ten year series in due time. Plus it wouldn’t be bad if more people had beautiful boots.

Sigh, with smart kids like that around, sometimes I forget that shit like this:

even exists. :[

Click for Salier’s Music Video of Massive Attack’s Splitting The Atom

Bigelow snatching the Oscar from the quintessential balding white male director.

So here’s a little test. Name the directors you know and love. Now, name the female ones. Kinda hard eh? With international women’s day just wrapping up, one has to wonder what a day like that means.

I was just listening to the local radio, and I overheard a DJ and a listener conversing about Women’s Day. It went something like this.

DJ: What does Women’s Day mean for you?

Listener: (spangly singaporean nasalness ensues) Oh, weeelll… It means I think I am an independent woman. That women are strong! Happy Women’s Day Singapore.

Earth to ignorant Singaporean woman, International Women’s Day is a day where women in the past rallied, protested and truly fought for their rights. Demonstrations marking International Women’s Day in Russia proved to be the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917. It isn’t just some day where you profess empty words on how you think you’re independent like some mind numbing Destiny’s Child song.

Alright, I’m sorry for raging on your screen. Let’s get back on point here. We wanted a post to celebrate some of the female directors we have adored in the past and Miss Bigelow herself. To all the non-filmmaking related people out there, this applies too. There are still many male dominated fields that could you know, use a little elbow nudge from a lady. And here are the ladies who have made a nudge in mine.

Kathryn Bigelow

When I told Pat Kathryn won, Pat said, “it’s about time”. Unapologetically female, Bigelow once modelled and isn’t ashamed to say so. People question whether it really is a triumph for women that Bigelow won because of the fact that her film was so male oriented. My opinion: Does it matter? To me it doesn’t. She directed well, the performances were strong, it doesn’t matter.

Sofia Coppola

One of my favourite directors ever, and the most well known in this list. I don’t know whether it was seeing her calm and collected presence in the midst of directing a crazy prom scene in the Virgin Suicides DVD extras or the fact that when discussing the topic of her movie, Marie Antoinette, Coppola said, “You’re considered superficial and silly if you are interested in fashion, but I think you can be substantial and still be interested in frivolity.” That and I love her films of course.

Not all great films have to be about deep set social and political change or adversity to be great.

The underrated Adrienne Shelley

I watched Waitress, I loved it. I checked out who made it so I could watch her future work. And I discovered shortly before being picked up for Sundance, someone robbed and murdered her in her apartment. Thanks murderer, there aren’t many female directors around in Hollywood and you axed one for a flat screen tv!

Miranda July

Miranda July comes up in my film classes, my drama classes, writing classes. Perhaps too emotional for New Yorkers claim the Pat, more for Californians claim the Pat. All things considered, NEEDS TO BE KNOWN to Singaporeans, claim the Manda. Lets explore outside the realms of Jack Neo’s cross eyed skanky scandal to the better things in life, shall we?

In the end, it’s a beautiful thing to see change happening and it is. I often struggle through the penis power play going on in the film industry. But being a minority has its perks. I know how it’s like to be on the outside looking in, and I know not to take things for granted. So I leave you with this link and this…

I started out making an oscar lady but it somehow turned into a HOT! TRANNY! MESS! It’s horribleness with a Lost In Translation wig. Booyah, shitbits.

The nutty nutty showreel of Meindbender Animation Studio. It made me feel so… rightminded. They do this stuff for the cartoon network, I’m pretty sure their audience are the quirky children. It’s nice to know someone out there is looking out for us.

From Meindbender via The Reels – The Official Demo Reel Channel on Vimeo
Check them out at meindbender.com

Chinese people are not shopping. They are playing vast amounts of mahjong, getting confuzzled over family time, and eating copious amounts of pineapple in tart form. I see indian men putting on red polo shirts on balconies, neighbours playing chinese new year songs on the saxophone. Trufax. Every new year is the same for me, shwaste myself on wine and pork at reunion dinner to avoid falling asleep. And spend the next day chugging expressos while surrounded by 50 indonesian people whom I don’t really know, meeting cousins I didn’t know I had.

It entertained me slightly seeing little tweets chirp away at the intense amount of money and boredom being collectively collected. The giant Singaporean gathering of repeated activities and obligatory slimy face smooches. How every sentence ends with “huat”.

…gong xi fa cai! huat ah!
…happy new year, may you be prosperous, huathuathuat!
…how are you huat?!
…have you seen my earrings, HUAT AH!!?!?!?

Something new this year though: Prada angpaos. WTF? In the shape of their leather products no less. It’s like a wallet, but… with money inside cos it’s like… a red packet… you know!?!?

But as usual there was the array of pork and PORKFAT to keep my happy. I unwittingly spouted my love for cubed fat to a family member, only to be greeted with confusion and dismay. Come on! CUBED MEAT YO. The more Zimmern you watch, the more you’d understand the need to knaw on pig’s ears and fatty skin pieces.

And of course, I was greeted with a wonderful bout of what little Hello Kitty there has.

It’s also about (…) listening to that lady spout philosophical stuff about the drizzling of the plum sauce on the lo hei… TOGETHER!

As I try to encapsulate the new year with images of charred meat and red packets, I wonder, what is it that I’m blogging about in the first place. Right, a reminder that this is a sort of new year. We chinese people are lucky, if we fail at resolutions for the ang moh new year, we have another one to veil the failures and start over again, in the span of 2 months. And well, even with all the tried customs and intensely unintense celebrations, I have to admit to being a softy. I mean, it’s siansation stuff like this that gives Singapore an identity. It’s not only about chicken rice and chilli crab. It’s also about cubed meat fat and listening to that lady spout philosophical stuff about the drizzling of the plum sauce on the lo hei… TOGETHER!

AYAM BRAND CHAMPAGNE!
Our beloved group from 2007.

Fine, I take credit for that horridness as well. We were 18, broke and young. We liked bubbly but could only afford ayam brand, okay?

So this week, the two of them passed me iamastuffedanimal.com and the website that is accredited with being as if myspace barfed on geocities.

Charine’s wonderful find:

This picture is self-explanatory. Want to horrify your girlfriend with a fuzzy valentine’s day gift of a strange caricature stuffed animal version of herself? This is the way to go. V-day is only 4 days away! Place orders now.

Melvin’s dismal introduction (from the king of smelvo crap himself comes this link):

Try to navigate it, it’s like, a wonderland where graphic design goes to die. Like a mystical mindmap. We’re ashamed we didn’t come up with it ourselves. Apparently, it also has two index pages, index.html and index.htm. Whut?!

And the last link is our own friend of a friend’s website. A lady who recently moved to Hougang and blogs about the many wtf things she find there. I concur about that place being a weird neighbourhood. After all, both Charine Miscellany Pie and Hanamite live there. She speaks of giant stubbed toes and bad engrish. Here’s an example post about the Singapore Science Centre from the pictureswithoutpermission blog.

Electric man homoerotic awesomeness at the Science Centre for kids. One wonders what the exhibitor was thinking when he came up with the above concoction. It doesn’t get more shitbitten than that. I mean, man, these 3 links do miscellany better than we do. Pat needs to stop blogging about design and start blogging about toilet signs STAT!

Funny thing is that it totally reinstates my previous statement about bad design(and bad ideas…) going everywhere. It apparently wandered onto said second graphic and a song by Jim Steinman. So help us all.

While looking for a book on comedy writing (a topic sorely omitted during the rush and broad topic study of a filmmaking degree), I stumbled across this cute little read from Tony Bill.

I appeciated the little bits of information and trivia of like how Samuel Fuller carried a luger that he would fire sometimes in lieu of yelling “Action!”. I thought about making up my own creative way of saying action in the future. A gong perhaps. And if it’s a good take, I’ll yell “Cut. Awesome Take Shooortaayyys!!!” using the iPhone T-Pain autotune app. Ah. I can just picture the reactions of the filmmaking uncles, pure gold I tell ya. Holler back at ya Mr Pang.

And then I actually did get my comedy writing book.

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a Double Act. This passion has become stronger with the many nights I spend watching Sheldon and Leonard talk sexy, sexy physics on The Big Bang Theory. (+10 for Kaley Cuoco) This got me thinking of what kind of kinda Singaporean, kinda tacktastic Comedic Duo would work.

Any suggestions from you shitty bitties out there would be greatly appreciated. And hopefully this book will inspire some kinda screwed up fictional version of the trio that is the shitbits. Come alive script!