about 3 weeks ago - No comments
I have occasionally dreamt of being a stand-up comedian – oh, the fame! the groupies! The nights of travelling up and down the M1 at 2am before parking in a dodgy service station! – and have therefore occasionally pondered on what my opening line would be. Omid Djalili‘s opening gambit was to come on and
about 2 months ago - No comments
Ob. disclaimer – I was invited via Qype to a night at Cinephilia West, a film cafe/bar/screening room in Westbourne Grove. My review of the place follows: If you like food, or cinema, this is DEFINITELY the place for you. First off, it’s a learned cinema fan’s paradise. The basement is the ideal living room,
about 3 months ago - No comments
Hell, it might well be the best film ever… If you’re in the UK, you can now watch Terry Gilliam’s superlative Brazil online till Sunday. It’s the film of a story that 1984 tried to tell, but adds a huge dollop of black humour, fantasy, and terrorism to the mix. Definitely a must see.
about 6 months ago - 1 comment
Thanks to @bloggerheads and b3ta for pointing me to this amazing late-70s UK video, celebrating the diversity of London by … having the great Derek Griffiths impersonate a Chinese man by pulling on his eyebrows and singing about Chinkies, with a popular UK song from 1969 celebrating the ‘melting’ pot’ of the UK. Derek Griffiths,
about 7 months ago - No comments
When my sisters and I were growing up (younger than ten), we were somewhat discouraged from consuming Western pop culture, ie music and films, by our parents. (Can’t you tell?) Thus, while my schoolfriends were (perhaps) reading Smash Hits et. al., we were listening to Cantopop and comedy films from Hong Kong, procured at great
about 7 months ago - 1 comment
According to Wikipedia, Hong Kong has 7 million citizens, 95% of whom are Chinese. According to this BBC News report about Hong Kong’s Mid-Levels escalator system – the “longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world” – there’s not a single Chinese person who could talk about the system. The reporter’s Australian, who interviews another
about 7 months ago - No comments
So… Gok Wan came from parents who ran a Chinese takeaway. One of the new dancers on So You Think You Can Dance UK, Gavin Tsang, “helps out in his parents Chinese takeaway”. Does this now mean that in the unlikely event that I achieve fame, I shall be “Former chinese takeaway runner Andrew Wong”
about 8 months ago - No comments
You may have seen a musical clip from the frankly genius idea of Silence of the Lambs: The Musical set to Lego: Anyway, it turns out the musical is coming to London mid-January! Who’s with me? We can all wear night-vision goggles and adopt cod-Virginian accents! (or surgical masks and cod-posh-Welsh accents)…
about 8 months ago - No comments
I’m watching a Chinese Cantopop music video, which has all the stylings of a Mariah Carey / Britney Spears video shoot. Groovy dancers, a wind machine, and a made-up lead singer in a short skirt. However, the only English-language lyric I can pick up is “Loneliness is my best friend”. Just to reinforce this fact,
about 8 months ago - No comments
Chinese Christmas dinner Originally uploaded by almost witty While you all prepare to tuck into your cliched turkey & cranberry Christmas dinner and bemoan that it’s the same meal every year, bear in mind that I wish, that just for one tiny year, that I could have a turkey & cranberry dinner with all the
about 10 months ago
To be fair, some of the first really good martial arts in this country was asian on black (ie: Bruce Lee taking on black students). It was one of the things that the rest of the martial arts community vilified him for.
about 10 months ago
I thought this was an urban myth!