up up and away

I watched the new superman movie,, it was cool,, but it brought about a lot of superhero movie talk.. I will say one thing about the movie though, DC did sort out the Kryptonite Condom debate..

The Superman debacle..
According to some, he is the most powerful superhero in the fictional realm of comic books.. he may have x-ray vision, super strength, the power of flight and all that good stuff; but I just don’t think Superman is the greatest superhero ever… my statement caused a little bit of ruckus.. my point being that Kryptonite is superman’s weakness, find enough of it and he’s a goner.. you build a cage out of kryptonite, terrorize some woman and hold her hostage, have her scream help, superman will fly in to save the day, pull the lever and drop the kryptonite cage, and superman’s yours.. the oldest trick in the book, and I’m positive he’ll fall for it.. cause he’s that much of a goody two shoes..

Would it kill Superman to use his powers for a little personal betterment.. if you had superman’s powers, how would you use them? Would you go out and risk your life day in day out to save those in need? Personally, the first person I would help is me.. here are just some of the things I would use my superpowers for, off the top of my head..

x-ray vision: a superpower with endless potential.. apart from the obvious of checking out what’s underneath that pretty dress - I would hit Vegas and gamble my heart’s content, using my powers at the blackjack and poker tables.. all in? you’re on bitch... Hit me, I said HIT ME DAMMIT!! I would also fuck around with all the hustlers on the streets of all major cities with the “follow the queen” card game, or the famous find the nut under the cup (or whatever that game’s called). Make some quick cash, and when they come to mug me and steal the money back, I’d beat them into next tuesday with my super strength. Ladies, the locker room will also be free territory, and you better believe that I will.. umm huhh.. Giving public speeches would never be easier, instead of just picturing everyone naked, you can actually see them naked.. I’d never pick the short straw.. life would be good..

super strength: apart from the obvious of twisting metal bars like balloon sculptures at birthday parties.. “here ya go kid, it’s a giraffe” CRUNCH!! “ohh hehehh excuse me, I forgot, your little 7 year old body can’t hold onto the weight.. what was I thinking.. heehehhee little fella musta broke a rib or something..” I would also forget about parallel parking, just pick up the car and safely place it in its parking spot.. compete in the world arm wrestling tournament and kick ass.. and I would bitch slap Hulk Hogan for the Ultimate Warrior.. I would definitely wrestle a rhino for my daily workout..

super speed: I’d compete in the Olympics as Bahrain’s only athlete, and win every single gold medal.. I’d then take all the gold medals, melt them into one huge medal and wear that around my neck, as a true Olympian..

flight: fly right up to a commercial airplane in mid flight and hang out on the wing waving at passengers.. I would fly into every single concert and major sporting event without paying for my tickets.. go on a tandem skydive and then freak the jumper attached to me, and not pull the cord.. Start up a pizza delivery service with pizzas flown directly from naples… I would fly up Everest, then take a leak off the top and take a picture of that.. I would definitely do you know what in mid air flight..

icy breath / heat vision: hey buddy, what the beer’s warm? No problem.. cue in icy breath.. here’s your ice cold beverage.. yeah what would you do without me.. you wanna see something cool? I can bbq those steaks with my heat vision.. cue in heat ray with accompanying heat ray sound.. how do you like yours done, medium rare? Sure baby.. and might I add, that’s some sexy underwear you have on..

What would you do with your superhuman powers, if you had them?


Another thought I had in regards to the whole superhero meditative sessions, is: what are the insurance premiums in these cities that house superheroes like? Will your car insurance have maniacal villain coverage? How about buildings? Who would insure and then who would reinsure? I’m interested to know someone’s theories on the structure of the insurance industry in these superhero cities…

It’s Thursday, give me a break..

go ask alice

‘Twas late on a Thursday night, which in a technicality would’ve made it a Friday morning.. Well past the birthdays fêtes, bon voyages, and your run of the mill weekend of merriment - I end up at a friends place.. The dwellings of said friend is in a compound of houses designed long long ago in a time far far forgotten.. The house has a lot of character and has been the source of interesting conversations, sounds, stories, and theories: the wooden ceiling in one room is warped like waves, remnants of previous tenants such as Asian characters etched on the doors, weird noises of what we think is a mongoose living in the pitched roof, and stories that we ourselves have lived out between these walls.. like I says, the house has lots of interesting character(s)..

Well past the witching hour, inside in a muddled trip of the warped wavy ceiling and the English mustard colored walls, I listen to the Sherpa pluck his guitar. Throwing licks together, his music makes the room a lot weirder than it already is… I compose myself an excuse and decide that retiring for the evening (or morning) might not be a regretful decision.. wafting past the cigarette smoke, empty bottles, and waves of conversation, I make my way out of the room, to the door, but not before a trip to the washroom for a quick pre-drive slash..

Exiting the house, the darkness swallows my world. Only a white light from the house gates illuminates the walk to my transportation.. Embarking on my 36 step trek past the confines of the house, I come across the most peculiar of characters to encounter on a pre-sunrise homeward bound slog..

In complete late late night silence, frozen, I stand face to face with the definitive example of literary inspired hallucinations, a white rabbit… As the spirit of Lewis Carroll laughed over my head, I start to formulate scenarios: number 1: Stop drinking Absinthe, even if it’s not the really real shit. Did someone poison one of my many tumblers? What sort of hallucination is this? Will the walrus make an appearance? Is this real? Someone put the kettle on? Will the rabbit lead me down a hole? A very happy un-birthday to you too edu. Will the red pill give me truth or should i take the blue one and remain ignorant. Is an attempt for contact with the rabbit in order? I need to investigate the verity of this image..

Just as I contemplated touching the white rabbit, the image of the killer beast from Monty Python and the Holy Grail populates my imagination.. As asinine as it sounds, the thought of a carnivorous white rabbit gnawing off my legs did put me off contact.. time ticking on by as it would for gunslingers at high noon, the notion of proof would be the ultimate savoir to my neuroticism..

Turning the flash on my camera-phone-life-dependent-apparatus, I adjust my stance to capture the rabbit.. in reply, he turns to face me and poses for the picture..



then, in an act that I deem out of character for a white rabbit (but not substantiated since I don’t know any white rabbits or their habits), he hops onto the path by my feet and gets even closer.. Is it trying to tell me something? should I follow him? Is this magic? Someone trapped in this body of a rabbit? Is this djin? He’s at the door to the house, should I let him in? Contemplating my queries, my head begins to ache, or that could have been the circumstances of my demeanor.. I decide to gather further evidence and take another picture..



The idea of ringing the doorbell was a plausible one; bring the guys outside and ask them if they see what I’m seeing.. Maybe I should let the rabbit into the house, cause the thought of it being the spirit of a previous tenant who died there was not too far out of my head..

and then in a moment of clarity, I looked at the time, assessed my state just before sunrise, reflected on my drive home, looked at the comrade in question, and decided that sleep sounds much better than running around the garden trying to follow a silly fucking rabbit...

Important music at one point in my life

I was in Junior High… my brother had just come back to visit from college… a forgotten tape lay there in the car – it contained music that would forever change my life… The tape was labeled “Slutting” – that’s all, it had no pornographic or crass references – just slutting and a piece of artwork that reminded me of something by Frank Miller… The funny thing about the tape is that it only had music on one side... It was given to my brother by a high school friend of his –my first encounter with what today you’d call a hipster – I would label her my first alternative indie rock crush… The track list was typed up on an old school dot matrix printer and said “Ani DiFranco (Out of Range)”… Disclaimer: I did some research and found out that Ani DiFranco released Out of Range in 1994 – which couldn’t be true because I was in high school in 1994… I’ve verified the dates with my brother and he’s corroborated my time order… He did mention that the hipster friend was really into the underground indie scene in the early 90s, that she could have very well had a bootleg… I’m still searching for a garage band called “Red October Conspiracy a Go Go” – she was definitely a cool cat…

On drives to and from school we had our tapes: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Faith no More, Soundgarden, (kids running around wearing Doc Martens and flannel shirts in the heat – it was grunge in the desert)… Ani Difranco had a different sound than I had ever heard, it wasn’t grunge, it wasn’t screaming through the speaker, it was a female’s vocals that sounded so warming and caring, but so hurt and misunderstood. I couldn’t tell what Ani was about, some of her songs were about love, but you weren’t sure whether she was singing to a man or a woman… She had moments of dancey indie rock and tunes of extreme heartache and pain. My little sister and I soon found ourselves constantly listening to the tape that would forever refine our taste in music… whether we were going to bounce around in the car to “Out of Range” or we were going to Cry about the fact that track three was about a sad stripper who was abused at a very young age; or how about how you are a china shop and I am a bull… we were listening to music that was much older than we could understand – but we loved it… Looking back, my kid sister may have been a little too young to listen to Ani, but she turned out much cooler than the rest of her siblings so I’m gonna let it slide..

You also have to remember, this was Bahrain pre 1994… There were 3 shops on the island that actually had CDs; cassettes were in abundance, but due to no copyright laws, they were all faked up copies… The music that made its way to Bahrain was also very popular – we were lucky that there was a decent rock following, so there was also acceptable rock music to get your hands on – but everything we had was still mainstream… I had to wait till I went away on my summer vacation to find out who Ani DiFranco was… walking into a tower records and asking the guy for an Ani Difranco cd… his blank “cannot compute” look at the little man (me) looking for bisexual indie college folk rock was soon replaced with him putting some cds in my hand.. It was there and then that I developed my crush for Ani DiFranco and her music…

Y’see, while my friends were just getting into girls, I was getting into Bisexual girls.. I know I know, perverted at such a young age, I agree, but at least I wasn’t drooling over the latest teeny bopper – I went for the artistic icon.. But it wasn’t just because she was a hottie that dug both men and women.. Ani refused to become a slave to the music industry… She pulled up her shirt and flashed Universal, Emi, Geffen and all those Big record labels that were milking it, her beautiful breasts and then pulled her shirt down and walked away.. She formed Righteous Babe Records, and did her music her way.. In an industry, where the big record labels easily dupe so many musicians to following trends, into signing off their lives, Ani stuck her ground, and that made me love her even more..

As the years piled on, my relationship with Ani blossomed and faltered – new genres of sounds were being incorporated in my library and I wanted to explore. In college I went to see her in concert – she sat there on stage looking into the crowd and poured her heart through the microphone.. She spoke back to us, teased us, laughed with and loved us.. Her sound brought back all those years of playing that tape over and over again.. all those junior high fantasies about a singer songwriter that touched me, in so many ways.. ehhehehh..

Many days have rolled on by since I listened to her music – I don’t know if I flooded my eardrums with so much of her sound that I wanted a change. Or maybe because I had to give up my life as a college student .. no matter what – I’ll always love you Ani.. always..

world cup 2006,,

my thoughts so far...

Insta-pundits: I cannot stand how people who never watch football, come in during the world cup and voice their opinion on the beautiful game… I’ve been hearing so much flak about the Italian national team constantly diving and making a meal out of every foul.. Diving in Italy is snidely accepted in the Serie A, but lets face it, everyone does it these days, you can’t just say that the Italians are the worst divers. If a player thinks he can get away with it, then he will try. Plus you don’t know what’s going on with the team when they’re a man down and are trying to win the game, you’ll resort to anything, even playing the foul to your advantage. The Australia Italy game was fodder for the amateur spectators to come in with their once every 4 years analysis to talk their shit.. you don’t understand the game, or watch the game regularly enough to know what the hell is happening with the history, the grudges, the rule changes, the officiating.. but because you’ve been watching the world cup these past couple of weeks you’re instantly transformed into pundit?

Gloating: to all you fans that said brazil or argentina were gonna win the world cup : muahahahaaaa.. I told you all that a South American team will not win the world cup in 2006.. I showed you the trends of the world cup winners bouncing between Europe and south america, I explained the two anomalies that occurred for italy and brazil winning it twice in a row.. but none of you listened.. I explained it all to you, but no one listened.. you were all wowed by the starting lineups, throwing names of champions.. It’s an all European semifinal fiasco and that can only mean one thing…

too bad for the English yesterday… I was cheering them on, & honestly believed they had a fantastic chance to win the world cup. They scraped through every single game, and when they needed to explode and step into proper form to lead them to the finals, they couldn’t do it. There are a couple of things that I would like to point out.. One of the senior players should’ve spoken to wayne rooney before the match and warned him of retaliating against carvalho. His reputation precedes him, you can’t pull that kind of shit in the world cup quarterfinals (three feet from the ref nonetheless) – everyone needed to keep their cool & the ref was looking for something. Owen Hargreaves’ performance should cement his position as the holding midfielder for England. Frank Lampard, a midfielder, can lead the scoring charts all year long for Chelsea, the team that pays him a seriously ridiculous amount of money per week - but he can’t do it for his own country? Steven Gerrard, who countless times has stepped up for big games and come out a champion, fizzles when they need him the most? Peter Crouch, for all his lanky x-factor sucked in front of the goal.. Sven, why did you bring Walcott to Germany if you had no intention of playing him? Why not take Defoe? I wouldn’t have taken Crouch in the first place… Substituting Aaron Lennon?? Subbing the substitute for penalties? Did you even make them practice penalties? I just think Sven tactically crumbled yesterday, and I personally don’t think Steve McLaren is the man for the job (although he is a good coach) – Right now, the English need Gus Hiddink.. too bad for the fans, the atmosphere they created during the game was incredible.. you can’t beat the English fans at spirit..

Politics of another country: During the Ghana game against the Czech Republic, John Pantsil, a Ghanian Player pulled out the Israeli Flag hidden in his sock and and waved it around when both goals were scored. The Ghanaian Football Association, apologized stating that they have nothing to do with politics they’re just here to play football and that the player was just naive. He was claiming that since he plays in the Israeli league he was supporting the fans that traveled from Israel to support him. Revealing a message under your jersey when you score has been banned and can be considered inciting the crowd.. so how come pulling out a flag and waving it above your head not be seen as inciting the crowds? Are you here to play football or make a statement?? And During the middle of the game?? He didn’t even score the goals.. look, if he wanted to show support to the fans that traveled to see him after the final whistle was blown, pull out the flag and wave it all around, that’s fine.. but during the middle of the game? Again, this isn’t a political comment I’m making.. I’m just saying, I don’t think that celebrating your country’s goals during the world cup is the more appropriate time to wave the flag of another country, because you’re showing support to your fans..

Conspiracies Galore: After the scandal that’s being unearthed in Italy right now, it’s difficult to watch the world cup and feel nothing’s been staged.. Moggi and Co. controlled the outcomes of a lot of games for so many years – everyone talked about something fishy going on, but for it to go on for that many years? they cheated, who’s to say that when you see something during the world cup right now, it’s not already been decided..


So now you’ve lost Brazil and I’ve lost England.. You’ve still got Germany and I’ve still got Italy..

FORZA AZZURRI