Bangkok Moves out of Lock-Down.

THE BANGKOK lock-down was officially over early last month and to celebrate and raise money for local skateboarder Shawn Ward’s critical illness fund the Bangkok Island team held a skate jam  musical extravaganza aboard their sand barge party boat. Local bands Plague Pits and Stay Awake headlined the show. The weather was kind, the crowd was in good spirits, the slop chest was drunk dry in piratical style.  
  

   

Half-way through Stay Awake’s set a member of the audience climbed up to the ceiling rafters and monkey-swung across the ceiling. Had he slipped carnage would have followed. Claret everywhere as we sailed back to the Port of Thieves. 

Twenty feet lower on the ship's dancefloor the crowd were oblivious to the potential disaster waiting to happen.

Oh, well, we thought as he swung across the ship, worse things happen at sea. 

We survived. On the river all was well. Somehow the party swinger made it back down to what passed as terra firma on the Bangkok Island, proving that even during co-vid19 not all heroes wear masks. It was that kind of night – danger, excitement, temptation. 

Watch out for more events on the Bangkok Island and for a chance to rock the boat. Let's hope they fully stock the bar next time. 

Brownstone were also back in action with their Comeback Concert. Again Stay Awake were on the bill alongside Born from Pain, Of Victims and Pray, while Venn, Jennifer Lackgren, and Fiffi rocked the acoustic stage. Good to hear music back in the city, and see the old venues reopening. 

Artwise the Andy Warhol show opened on the 12th August and runs until November at the River City. So if soup cans and Marilyn are your bag head on over. Oh, and graffiti art, break beat legend and global personality Goldie opened his Aurum gallery in Chareon Krung showcasing contemporary, urban, and street art from around the world. The boys at This Strange Life Podcast caught up with Goldie for a chat about Thailand, art, and the exact location of a Mintaur's Johnson.  

For things literary a Charles Bukowski centenary celebration was scheduled for the 16^th August at Fatty’s Bar and Diner, but they cancelled last minute due to a lack of water mains pressure. I'm pretty sure the decadent LA novelist and poet who lived on the brink of chaos would have let the show continue as long as the beer was flowing. The show is rescheduled for this Friday 21st August.    

Photo credit: Minsida Kantanarkit

The Beat Goes On. 
JD. BKK. 17.8.20

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John McAfee - An Interview with The Shadow

In Jungian psychobabble the Shadow refers to that dark, often unconscious, part of the personality that we like to think doesn’t exist. “Everyone carries a shadow,” Carl Jung reckons, and the less we are aware of it, the darker and more menacing it becomes. The Shadow orders that fifteenth shot of tequila, dials the ex-wife, gets in a  fist fight, sits out a prison sentence. The shadow is responsible for eBay binges, hot-dog crust pizzas, and McDeliveries.

Some men rise above their Shadows. Some motherfukas take a long hard look at their dark-side and decide to raise the God darn game. This can be no truer than with the anti-virus software entrepreneur and US presidential candidate John McAfee. On the run since 2012 following tax queries and a deadly neighborhood dispute McAfee nowadays promotes his crypto-currency enterprise GHOST COIN from inside his clandestine bunker.     

Myself and the lads at This Strange Life caught up with John for this exclusive off-the-rails interview. What an absolute blast of a performance from the seventy-one-year old who reportedly sold shares of his old firm to the tune of $100 million. McAfee is totally aware of his darker side wearing his numerous imprisonments as badges of honor, and his drug experimentation as both anthropological expeditions and spiritual explorations. These stories are totally captivating, rich in lurid detail, and complete with a seasoned narrative arc. These, Ladies and Gentlemen, are dark fairy tales from the edge, and this interview proves once and for all (if proof be needed) that the devil indeed has the sweetest tunes.    

Thanks to John and Janice for making this interview happen. 
This was a real highlight for 2020.          

JD, BKK, 2020

The Circus is Coming to Town

THE CIRCUS, a brand new novel by J.D. Strange, comes to town today.

                                                      THE CIRCUS by J.D STRANGE

FROM the inside....

GUESS IT took Joey the Clown, and the dead child, to finally drag me away from The Circus.

It wasn’t easy.

Tearing yourself from the carnival is the most difficult thing you will ever do, Ladies and Gentlemen - The Circus is cunning, baffling, and powerful…

… The Greatest Show on Earth…

Joey the Clown was like a brother, but he had buried a dead child in a ditch behind the Strongman’s caravan, and, as you all know, the worst thing about having brothers is that you never know what they’re up to.

And yes, clowns and brothers are generally repulsive creatures, and Joey was no exception. He’d apply Mehron makeup while taking long purposeful drags on a mentholated cigarette, telling us, with uncanny wit and detail, what a cruel and unhappy place the world had become.

Behold the blood-red smear smile of the clown, the black and white striped shirt, those thick, bushy, arched, evil eyebrows, the white makeup, behold the evil inside. Behind that evil smile was a man who had killed a kid, dug a ditch, and dipped him in there. Then he’d shoveled enough earth on top to help us all forget what he’d done. There was bound be trouble from that day onwards, Ladies and Gentlemen, each and every time The Circus came to town. 

***

‘So, what’s it all about then, eh?’

None of us knew what it was about.

At least I didn’t.

What was it all about?

Was it about the way he’d grasped the rose-colored skin of the child’s neck and twisted until it snapped?

Or the speed with which he’d dug the ditch behind the Strongman’s caravan?

The way he’d dumped the body and lit a cigarette with the casual displacement of a meat trader?

The pack of cards he’d used to lure the boy in?

Or was it all about the screech of the owl that flew above The Circus that night?

Life is cheap under the Big Top, but Joey never seemed the type of clown you’d see luring puppies into the heart of the forest. As a child he was neither evil, sociopathic, nor superficially charming. Not at first, at least. Joey’s toxicity was slow and deadly, building up like mercury or lead. His evil, once settled, radiated from within - long periods of exposure resulted in total obsession - a subtle manipulation of thought. Once trapped inside the web you’re reliant on that toxic theatre - you needed it.

Native American Booger Dancers wore masks chasing Indian girls deep into the smoky night before ritually savaging them. When not cracking jokes at funerals (what kind of douche cracks jokes at a funeral?) the Archimimus of Ancient Rome performed grotesque impressions of the dying at the foot of the gallows. The French arrogantly boasted both the Clown Blanc, the Anarchist, the Fool, and the awful white-faced Auguste. Then there’s the less obscene Charlie Chaplin, the pathetic hobo tramp of modern western cinema.

Clowns were everywhere, on television, in magazines, hiding under the bed. Cumbersome floppy feet creeping about in the woods, huge blood-red smiles hiding cruel intentions. Victims of coulrophobia claimed the supposedly emotionless clown mask spooked them. This is nonsense. Clowns do feel emotion; they feel a prolonged stasis of malevolent HATE.                 

Captain Popov, the human cannonball, taught me much of what I know about clowns and had warned me about Joey – ‘there’s something not quite right ‘bout him,’ he said. But once you’ve been charmed by the wonderfully cynical despair of a pantomime artist, it’s difficult to get back on track.

Amazon kindle: https://tinyurl.com/y9yww6ooAmazon paperback: https://tinyurl.com/ydh68gdn