It was a red, dilapidated seventh-hand giveaway, possibly salvaged from a sunken ship in the 1950′s. Definitely not something one would pay SGD 100 for, and definitely not worth the SGD 60 I paid to haul it to my place. Buyer’s remorse aside, I loved that couch. With a cheapass sofa cover draped over, the couch became my home within a home: I slept on it, chowed down a hundred-and-one takeaway meals on it, jacked off to countless hours of porn on it…

No more.

I now live in a 6ft-by-3 space of bedding on the top of a bunker, in a cheap (by Singaporean standards, at any rate) backpacker’s hostel. It’s a novel experience for sure. I don’t have to wake up and wade through three feet of dirt and muck on the way to my bathroom, which was worse: I shed more hair than a menagerie of untended kittens, and imagine all that perpetually wet. I don’t have to tiptoe over shards of broken beer-bottle glass, or half-putrefied chicken bones tied in polythene and left there for weeks. This hostel is sparkling clean. Disturbingly so.

I don’t complain. The front door is the Tooth Relic Temple. The kitchen is the Food Street. Chinatown teems with life, and bustles with the relentless energy of commercial activity, 24×7. Many an evening, I find myself at my usual cafe, forking in local fare and quaffing down cold beer while I watch people from all over the world (skimpily-clad females, especially) stroll around in their touristy manner. It’s fascinating. It’s relaxing. And most of all, it’s easy on the pocket.

It boggles the mind, how many kidneys, souls and blowjobs one has to give to pay the rent for (much less own!) an apartment in Singapore. Given my famously ineffectual financial management, and my tendency to take care of business at the eleventh hour, Pillows and Toast was the one of the few places I could afford. Without having to rob a bank, of course. Although I can’t say I won’t, a week later.

Friends, Countrymen, and that creepy dude who tried groping me in the MRT, I accept all forms of payment. Those into BDSM, you’ll have to wait a week. My butt’s still sore from the last time.

Damn I miss my couch.

Know what’s the worst way to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day? To be in an Irish party, and be sober because you have to peddle bone marrow donation forms, and coerce shit-faced Irishmen into giving you mouth swabs, all for the sake of poor sick snots somewhere out there who’re somehow going to benefit from smears of Guinness-laced spit.

Call me a cad for sounding uncharitable, but did I mention that I was sober the whole time? Yes, hard to believe for some of you. Heck, I find it hard to believe, myself. There I was, bang in the middle of it all: giant screens showing football, a rich buffet, a hearty crowd (whose surnames are, in all probability, Stentor), and gallons and gallons of guinness that were going around and being quaffed down countless gullets, with gusto. Except down mine.

Those coupla hours, I knew exactly what Coleridge was talking about.

Dear Someone Out There Who May Need My Marrow Someday, you owe me a fucking pint. Wait, make that two.

Bumblebee: check. Wine: check. The scene is cheesy enough, so cheese: check.

Bumblebee, chillin' outside the Sydney Opera House.

This Retch-A-Sketch is for Silke, who’s now so enamored with Bumblebee, she has hijacked him and is taking him around the world. Good for him. After months inside my crummy apartment, the poor autobot needs the air.

Folks, do you want a Retch-A-Sketch too? It’s really simple: all you have to do is give me three random words, and I’ll connect the three together with a picture. Time permitting, of course. There’s precious little to spare, after long office hours, weekends of comatose lethargy, and all that porn out there on the internet I haven’t yet seen.

As much as I’d like to recount the Incredible Adventures of Rindo McAwesome in the Orient, I’ll leave those for another time. Or possibly never, my forgetfulness and lethargy being what they are. So let’s skip the tales of cop chases, saving damsels in distress and other feats of derring-do, shall we? Bigger developments are afoot.

I’ve been drawing!

Living in Singapore without a smartphone is a disability. It’s not so much the inability to navigate in the city (a big problem indeed; I’m known for being more directionally challenged than a pickled turnip) or missing out on the  innumerable apps that make hailing a cab, finding out nightspots with great deals, and life in general so much easier; the thing that irks me most is the abject boredom in subway rides! While the rest happily stalk cute friends of friends on Facebook and hurl birds at pigs with their iThingies, I have to resort  to more Neanderthal means of entertainment: a sketchbook and pencil. And nowadays, the Zig.

My pencil work is always messy, and I hardly bother to clean up afterwards. I just sketch layer upon layer until I get a semblance of what I have in mind, and leave it rough-hewn. “It adds character,” I tell people. I’m plain fucking lazy, I tell myself.

Enter the Zig. Folks, it’s a dream. Blacker blacks, cleaner contours and it’s somehow… swift. It feels so good running that nib across paper and masking the imperfections with a rich flush of black. God, I drool just thinking about it.

Observe. Svelte super-women, but dull. Lifeless. Woefully inarticulate. Nothing is more frustrating than a lissome figure that’s ill-defined.

Now, look at this. Sharply etched muscle and, if you know your hatching (I don’t), excellent texture differentiation. Isn’t Death dandy?

Of late, I’ve been trying dynamic poses and stuff that action heroes are wont to do. Let me tell you, the pencil roughs were shit, but the Zig magicks them into clean-cut figures of men in action. Satisfaction.

Being off the internet for 2 hours everyday does have its benefits. Drawing semi-nude women is therapeutic.

No, seriously. I half-expected that Theseus, in the midst of heated battle, would rip out his toga and clobber the living daylights outta the bad guys in his shiny blue-and-red super suit. Just look at Henry Cavill: the man’s a spitting image of Christopher Reeve, and a whole lot more menacing. Plus, he’s got the beefcake to match the exaggerated proportions of Mr. S in comic books.

I wasn’t so sure when the teaser images of “Man of Steel” first came out, but now I’m convinced: Henry Cavill may be the best Superman yet. And with darker story material from Goyer and Nolan, “Man of Steel” may well be the best Superman movie yet.  And with Zach Snyder at the helm, we can expect some tastefully done slo-mo action sequences, a la “300″, “Watchmen” and “Sucker Punch”.

In short, a movie well worth waiting for. June 14, 2013 is a little too far out, but hey, anything for Superman.

Ah, but we digress. This blog is about “Immortals” – Hollywood’s latest attempt at aggrandizing Greek myth with beautiful people, spectacular visual effects, and incredible amounts of gore. And unfortunately, nothing much else. We follow the adventures of a strapping Greek peasant, Theseus, in his quest to foil the plans of the mad King Hyperion who’s hell bent on finding this super awesome weapon that will destroy the Gods. Does Theseus prevail? No, he doesn’t. Does Hyperion prevail? No, he doesn’t. Do the Gods prevail? No, they don’t. End of story.

To give the movie makers some credit, I loved the way the they strove to “keep it real”. The austere visuals, the  unabashed display of mutilation and dismemberment, and most especially the reimagining of the Minotaur plot, which I think was very well done. Remember Achilles’ heel in “Troy”? Quite like that, yes.

But after all the pain to create what could have well been the story behind the famous myth, they bring in Gods with super powers et al. If there are supernatural beings in the picture, why not go all out and stay faithful the old stories? I, for one, would have loved to see a real Minotaur. Oops, spoiler.

Then again, what old tale does not have its spin-offs? The comic-books of today have their hundred other story versions, where artists simply do what they please with superheroes, and justify it with “Oh, this is an alternate Universe.” So let’s not nitpick on the wildly inaccurate – I repeat, wildly inaccurate! – character histories, and enjoy the film for what its worth, shall we?

The violence is relentless from the very first scene. We are subjected to seeing men being hacked, slashed and shredded in increasingly imaginative ways. Heads burst open like melons, limbs are torn off bodies and flung all over the place, and at one point a God neatly cleaved a dude in two, along his spine. After a while, I got jaded from all the bloodletting. For once, I wanted the action to stop, just to see if there was any story beyond that.

While I shouldn’t be complaining (I got these sneak preview tickets from Omy.Sg for free!), I’ll give the movie a 2.5/5. Decent. Could’ve been more, though. Much, much more.

“Immortals” does have its moments. Like that epic showdown between the Gods and the Titans. More specifically, Athena slashing the Titans left, right and center. Warrior chicks turn me on. And, of course, that fine view of Freida Pinto’s derriere – in her birthday suit.

Boys, go get your tickets now!

Click to see image full-size.

I know, I know. Cortana isn’t quite extraterrestrial, but 25th Century technology oughta be alien enough for us.

Minor inaccuracies aside, this is turning out to be great practice, to shake the rust off my wrists.

So friends, countrymen, and the dude who got to my blog looking for “hercules p*rn”, do send in a bunch of three random words and, if I can, I will dedicate a picture to you. Drop a comment in here, the Retch-A-Sketch Requests page and – provided the time, inclination, and boredom borne out of too much Internet – I will pick up that stylus.

PS: I used Arial for the iPhone text in the picture. I would love to know exactly what font is used in Siri. Anybody?

More than the job, the long commute time and the general vagaries of old age (the woes of being in the late twenties, sigh), I squarely blame that massive time-suck of humanity we call Facebook. I don’t understand how the hundred and one annoying updates on breakfasts and the inane jokes and the LOLs and  the baby pictures (now even belly pictures, God!) can still keep me hooked to the screen. I try to convince myself that Facebook has allowed me to find out, check out and have a good time at countless events I wouldn’t have known otherwise, but the voyeur in me does a victory jig every time I stay an hour too long. I just have to know what everybody’s doing: the trips people have gone to, the exes’ new boyfriends, the now-tame lives of those who bullied me in school. And in college. And at the office…

Then there’s Twitter. And then there’s Reader. And then there’s Youtube. Oh good lord, Youtube.

ADD has taken its toll, big time. Thin of wallet and sober of disposition, I spent much of this long weekend, de-cluttering my computer. I found a lot of unfinished works lying around, some great ideas left incomplete because I was too lazy to pick up the stylus. I also noticed that, since 2007, I haven’t improved much. I learned nothing new. I tried nothing new. I just did the same thing, over and over again. While one would think iteration enhances skill, 4 years of my sporadic sketching fits proves that wrong.

Everything changes today. Well, actually, yesterday. Have you heard of “I Will Drawing That For You“? It’s this super idea by illustrator Nathan Hale, where he asks readers for bizarre and whimsical ideas which he then tries to sketch up.

So here I am, with “Three Words and a Picture” “A Picture’s Worth Three Words” “Help Me Guys!” “Retch-A-Sketch”: quite simply, I ask you for three words. Completely random, unconnected words. And then I draw something.

Yesterday, thanks to @strangie, I learned a new word: Frou-Frou. This Retch-A-Sketch is for her.

Good friend of mine @prazy suggested “aperitif, zombie, libido“. This Retch-A-Sketch is for him.

All in all, a fun exercise. And probably something I can do every evening, instead of passing out at the local bar. Do hit me up with your random words (preferably nouns) and I’ll dedicate a Retch-A-Sketch to you. Let’s see how I fare.

That’s David Coverdale for you, folks. Not one of the more histrionic of showmen (Bruce Dickinson, for one, leaps 50 feet in the air at least three times a song), Coverdale still has the energy that’s kept him going for four decades. Yea, that long. There were lots of elderly people at the grounds: the stately old couples, the wrinkly pitbulls with pony-tails and giant tattoos, the bunch of silver-haired dudes who sang along to every song…

All I needed to hear, was “Is This Love”. If I were to describe the early years of proto-teen angst in a few minutes, I’d choose this song. And getting to hear it live was, boy… like time travel.

Their latest album “Forevermore” sounds promising. The coupla tracks they played that night were like throwbacks to their earlier style. I should get me a copy.

In other news, hello blog.

Who doesn’t like walking down memory lane, fondly recalling the good ol’ days? I’m yet to meet someone who doesn’t remember school or college without a hint of wistful nostalgia. And not without reason – those were the times when we were high on life, love, and sincerely believed we weren’t the colorless dipshits we have since grown into. I’m sure you too often hear that sigh when your friend reminisces about those formative years, happily forgetting the trauma of bullies, sneering girls, and the tyrannical Home Rule.

“You Are The Apple of My Eye,” a Mandarin movie set in Taiwan, is meant for that friend of yours. Which is probably why the movie theater at the Shaw Lido was packed to capacity – and then some  - last week. People had to sit on the aisles to get their fix of the glory years. Chronicling the lives of a gang of friends as they breeze through school, college and careers in a montage of interesting camera angles, the film’s main focus is on two of them: one, your regular brain-dead idiot with authority issues, and the other, prim and proper Miss Superbrain. And – surprise, surprise – they fall in love.

It’s hard not to like the characters, and everyone else in the film. The energy, the enthusiasm, and the sheer imbecility of their actions remind us so much of ourselves – down to the petty disagreements and the cheesy love letters and the compulsive need to jerk off  in a hot teacher’s class. Ah, good times.

Still, you can’t help but wonder that the guy (it can’t be otherwise – crass masturbation gags aren’t women’s forte) who made this film tried hard to bring “cool” into the male lead, perhaps compensating for his own douchebaggery when he was that age. Every perceived weakness is (at a later point in time) a hidden strength. Every setback brings about a new opportunity. Every supposedly killer punch-line, is given to that one guy. Life is not like that. Then again, our perceptions of our own lives aren’t close to real life either. By a mile.

All said and done, it’s not a movie that’ll have you yawning throughout, despite the languid pace and the marked absence of car chases and explosions. I’ll recommend this to those who’ve grown jaded from the years the running for paychecks and the crushing adult disappointments. There’s nothing quite like a rose-tinted tribute to The Glory Days on celluloid, to help you forget the pain of missing out on that promotion, or getting denied an extension on your loan, or losing that hot chick at work to a guy with better looks, a better car, and a debt-free apartment.

PS: The credit roll had the message “The masturbation scenes portrayed in this film were performed by trained professionals. Please do not imitate or attempt this at home.” I kid you not. It’s the little gems like these, that make a movie worth watching. Thank you, Omy Sg, heh heh.