Two Double-Oh Seven!!!

When you're feeling really giddy

The club is playing Mr. Diddy

Selling ecstacy so sweet.

You can party

You can Cha-Cha

You can stay at home

With Mama

Just make sure you move your feet.

Happy New Year one and all.

Lots of love - Hamza

R.I.P

It's official. Saddam Hussein's reign in Iraq is effectively finito. Kaput. Over. There's no other way to describe my grief except with song. So I sing,

Some people wait a lifetime, for a moment like this,
I can't believe it's happening to me.....

Unless you're a fan of American Idol that will make as much sense to you as Tori Amos's lyrics would to a fourth grader (or an adult for that matter). Not everyone is happy about Saddam's demise though. CNN, Fox and BBC are raking in the Nielsen ratings through commentary choked with emotion while people from Human Rights organizations crawl out of whatever sewer they usually inhabit, blinking their mole-like eyes in the harsh spotlight and making statements which will be forgotten way before New Year's eve.

Personally, I don't think anyone's death should be celebrated. Saddam isn't exactly Adolf Hitler but that's like saying margarine isn't exactly butter. Periodically spread either one on a roasting turkey and the sizzling skin will taste just as good. Mmmm..turkey.

Id Mubarak

It's Eid all around the world. A day when Osama Bin Laden can hang up his explosive coat and spend the day with the wife and kids. Am I implying that all Moslems are terrorists? Certainly not! Although, in my experience, everyone from my grandma-cum-Arabic-instructor to my 10th grade Islam teacher could scare the shit out of Mr. T or the whole A team. I pity the fool who tries to mess with them.

Eid means different things to different people. I speak for everyone at home when I say for us its basically about the chicken. Here's looking at you KFC. You haven't seen real profits until you've opened up an outlet in the Maldives on Eid. Salaam y'all. Hamza - out.

Like A Monkey With A Miniature Cymbal

And now for no apparent reason, as the premier Maldivian with his finger on the pulse of good music, I bring you three songs I'll find hard to let go when this year is over (but probably will).

*p.s - this shit is da bomb (thank you English education).


Hot Chip - Over and Over (Electro funk for funky electricians!)




Nerina Pallot - Sophia (Classical music in the 21st Century)




Snow Patrol With Martha Wainwright - Set Fire To The Third Bar (Like Kate Bush but less annoying)

Miss USA Acts Like Sex Object. Shocks No One.

The funny thing about TV news is that you can't really choose what to watch. Unless you've got TiVO, which I don't. So all I hear about these days is beauty pageant winners going around conducting themselves in less than ladylike fashion (for a less obscure description see this!).

Let me start by saying, what the frack is wrong with Donald Trump (apart from his hair, his way of speaking...ad nauseum ad infinitum) and Rosie O'Donnell (clever examples followed by smart-alecky Latin too many to list in parantheses) for that matter? So a beauty contestant who spends 90% of her life in bikinis or less flashed some skin in a club. So she does drugs in a country where even soccer moms have cabinets full of pills labeled "to sleep", "to do laundry" and "to avoid sex with husband", among others. Big whoop! And don't even get me started on Ms. Nevada and Miss USA's makeout sessions with women. What's the big deal? That's what Donald Trump and Rosie O'Donnell probably call a Saturday night. Is kissing a member of the same sex up there on the same level as snorting coke now? (Then I know a couple of cheerleaders at my University who should get life without bail).

**Note: More importantly why do all the douchebags with their red caps worn back to front get all the beauty queens (see pictures to get what I'm talking about)? Why don't you answer that Stephen Hawking you paraplegic bastard!?!?

Begging To Differ

I don't usually do stream-of-consciousness crap on my blog. Mainly because I think it's a particularly lame and pretentious cross-section of society who engage in it. But I can't seem to sleep tonight and boring myself to death might actually help me with my insomnia. So here goes.

A certain comment on my sister nisa's blog got me thinking about the ways in which people define themselves and how that's changed over time. Let's take me for example (and I am quite a specimen if I do say so myself). An uber-liberal. Not quite the Nazi of liberals (because I don't believe in forcing my views on other people) but fanatically left-wing to a fault. If I may be so bold as to borrow the phraseology of your average cookie-cutter 'conservative' I and other people like myself might be best described as baby-killers, fag-lovers, mollycoddlers of criminals and junkies, which translates into pro choice, pro gay rights, anti-capital-punishment believers in the freedom to smoke weed. (The last one is pretty much the same but the rest have a certain zing in right-wing-speak you must agree.)

Although I believe the whole black-and-white-ism of the existence of a clear line separating the political left and the right is a false dichotomy, the truth is that people seem to be increasingly liable to espouse ideas which they don't believe just to belong to either camp. There are folks taking part in setting fire to abortion clinics just because they're afraid that by not doing so they allow their entire moral universe to crumble. And it's not always as militant as the example that I chose. The point is that an either/or mentality is beginning to take hold of society.

On the less arsonist side, liberals had the distinction of being 'cool' around the 60s to the 80s because they were a minority acting against a conservative establishment. But now liberals are the establishment because everyone and their grandmother believes in justice, freedom and equality (not to mention the Frankenstein's monster which is political correctness). It's the religious "fundamentalists" and haters in general with their naysaying and constraints who are the persecuted minority now. So they are 'cool'-er by default.

It may be that the mistake liberals made was to try to stifle the right-wingers' voices completely. I guess no point of view should be totally ignored. If someone thinks you're hacking away at the ties that bind people in a community just by getting a tattoo, it's important to stop and ask them why they think so instead of talking down to them from your secularist, individualist, free-thinking pedestal. And I plead guilty to making that mistake several times.

The part about liberals having the bigger army is true about the world at large but where I come from (home sweet home), confused conservative right-wingers are still in control so let's bring on the orgies and smoking crack in public because we've got a status quo to overturn if we want to catch up with the rest of the world.

If nobody wants to hear me go on about stuff like this again please send me some Ambien or even horse-tranquilizer. I really need to sleep.

Going Up In Smoke

What is? My dream of returning to the Maldives and building the biggest and most hedonistic nocturnal hotspot since The Viper Room that's what. Because I will not live anywhere where I can't afford my life-threatening habits in. It's bad enough that bungee jumping and extreme skateboarding isn't available (and I would be just as concerned if I was into them) but raising the price of tobacco? That's the last straw! Thirty fucking Rufiyaa for a twenty-pack of Marlboro reds?!?! Excuse my French but eloquence goes out the window when you know that that's just a tentative price until the market reaches equilibrium. That's still about 7 dollars less than the price of it here in the UK (and I would stick it to the Queen but damn you just can't hate someone who has a matching hat for all her outfits. That's style baby!). But, as god is my witness, the day that a daily dose of nicotine costs more than 50 Rufiyaa a pack, is the day that I join the inevitable bloodbath that follows. ¡Viva el fumar!

So much to say to a certain someone but it's already been said and no one has said it better than Pink. She might have been talking to George W. Bush but I'm sure she meant us to use her message (legally or not) to confront all of our demons. So here goes. Dear Mr. President,....

Before the Ball Drops

Approximately two weeks left to the big day and I can't help agreeing with what my boo Nisa says on her blog about the deplorable party scene in Male'. Sure there'll be underground house parties (not to mention the billions upon billions of political parties) and maybe a rave or two but it just won't do to have us a free independent democratic nation without the ultimate expression of the freedom of assembly - a nightclub! So all you party people, please read about it on Nisa's blog and show some support for the newest breed of activist.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Bleeding Corpses

Cats. Close cousins of the majestic lions (The only difference being that one needs to be killed at a cowardly distance with a gun and the other is captured in a bag and tossed into the nearest body of water in order to dispatch it).

The picture above was taken in a cemetery in the Maldives, by my friend Nizy, whose Anne Geddes-like photographical artistry can only be appreciated when one takes into consideration that this particular shot was taken with a cellphone (more of her work here). But tarry Hamza, prithee tell us why the wench and thee ventured thus into a place which serves as a fearful reminder of our mortality, an Elizabethan playwright might ask. Why, for no other reason but our curiosity over cats and their presence at Maldivian burial grounds. We as a people don't share a traditional reverence of felines, as watchers over the dead, with ancient Egyptians (although the watchmen at the cemetery certainly looked like they could've been born under the rule of a Pharoah in the b.c.s).

Hilarious senility aside (which along with obesity and homosexuality are the only things politically-correct society is still allowed to make fun of) those old farts obviously loved the dozens of cats they had living in there so they're all right in my book. I'm a real animal-lover. Heck, I'd join PETA if I didn't have more of a life. I admire anyone who can convince Pamela Anderson to take her clothes off for them (that's why my walls are filled with framed pictures of David Hasselhoff, the rest of the cast of baywatch, Hugh Hefner and Tommy Lee). So, I don't understand why I enjoy the occassional episode of Happy Tree Friends so much. I guess it takes me back to the days when The Itchy and Scratchy Show was still featured on The Simpsons. An example of creative animated animal abuse on Happy Tree Friends below and more here.

Auld Lang Synes

Blogger convention dictates that the end of the year is a special occassion marked by the making of useless lists which nobody in the whole world (or blorld) cares about. Who am I to fight city hall then? So I've compiled a short mournful list of my favorite cancelled tv shows which I think should have still been on air in this year. Why aren't they? Because the world is fucked up and if it wasn't, every baby would be born with a choice between a pre-paid (for the lazy ones) or a post-paid (for the dumber work-aholics) life.


Futurama


What Futurama did was update The Simpsons, and not in the lovable yet overly preachy way that South Park did or by ending up as haphazard mishmashes of skit-reels like Family Guy and American Dad. Futurama gave the world Zoidberg. Probably the best fictional character ever dreamed up.

Futurama was not only zany but cerebral at the same time for five whole seasons. Case in point: it taught me the most inventive get-rich-quick scheme in the world, which is to open an account, cryogenically freeze yourself for a thousand years, thaw out and find yourself an instant billionaire!

Take a gander below at the biggest loss to the TV industry. (I chose the video clip with Frou Frou's version of Holding Out For A Hero drowning out the dialogue because if you haven't already seen the show you should at least see one full episode without making up your mind after viewing one measly clip.)



Commander In Chief

You would think twice about calling George W. Bush a retard after watching this show, however much evidence there is to support it. Because a president's job is not easy and American presidents, let's face it, are responsible for the whole world. We might want to go ahead with this silly charade of calling ourselves sovereign nations and designing pretty little flags for kicks but the truth is we're all just aisles in the supermarket that is the U.S.A.. And no other show (except maybe The West Wing, 24 and a bunch of others) has done such a good job of making this point clear.

Don't get me wrong the show isn't completely realistic to the point of boredom, like say home videos of your childhood. The edginess factor is provided by the fact that the Commander in Chief is a political independent and a woman AND played by a cyborg which its inventors have lovingly named Geena Davis (hardly noticeable except when they try to make her display too much emotion. I've tried that with my toaster. It just doesn't work).

Only one season of this excellent show is available although if the networks are interested I've written a script for a second season which takes the whole shock value of what-if-a-woman-was-president concept to the next level by having Mackenzie (G-bot's character's name) run against a half-black half-mexican atheist lesbian. And lose!!!

The trailer below is from the less exclamation-mark-worthy, yet good, actual show. (Don't let the lame-brained promo ABC made fool you. This show wasn't written by people who are dumb enough to think that The Guess Who's American Woman is an homage to American Women)

Plastic Surgery For Your Rashes

The tragedy! The bittersweet tamarindishness of it all! The fourth season of Nip/Tuck has come to a close. Oh how I'll miss Julian MchMahon's ubiquitous ass and the parade of almost perfect tens who invariably end up between his black satin sheets. Never to hear the uncannily well-chosen background music that Roma Maffia plays from a stereo she reaches through glass doors with a seemingly telekinetic swish of her hands, while the Doctors, Troy and McNamara, nip, tuck, suck, uplift or just generally gross-out the audience. Until the start of the fifth season that is!

If you haven't seen Nip/Tuck ever before, I would strongly suggest starting from the first season. It's an unequaled masterpiece which sadly even the writers of said show themselves haven't been able to duplicate and these were no ordinary two-cent hacks but the geniuses...genii(?)...very smart people who came up with the idea of coke mules smuggling their stash in breast implants. Substance and allegory aside, the very sight of Kelly Carlson (a cardinal sin to be confused with lesser female specimen, Kelly Clarkson. Its as easy as telling the difference between potbelly pigs and birds of paradise but to complement my skillfull use of animals as metaphor, the difference between both Kellies is shown below) is enough to keep you coming back for more.

It's also rumored that unless you watch Nip/Tuck you will end up impotent/barren and contract horrible eczema (thank you two hour seminar on advertizing with subtlety and grace). So watch the trailer below or stock up on Dove soaps and steroid ointments.



FYI; that beautiful song those people are awkwardly mouthing is Brighter Discontent by The Submarines. Buy their single too. Same risk of childlessness and skin mutilation applies.

Redundancy Rocks

I wouldn't normally post about the same thing twice and I sure as hell don't give a flying bat's hiney about the opinions of people who leave comments here (especially when they bring my platinum-plated vocal chords into question). Nevertheless, any interest in my favorite artists are more than welcome. I guess it is true that Bocelli can sing rings around most other people (with the exception of Kevin Federline perhaps. Popozao y'all!). Out of spite I could point out that Andrea doesn't have 20/20 vision unlike your's truly but I'm obviously the bigger man here so I'll take the high road and just leave people to make their own conclusions.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, a video of my arch-nemesis with some strange Marilyn Munroe impersonator singing another Spanish classic Somos Novios. Feliz Navidad bitches!

Of Ballads and Blogs

So while I was groggily recovering today from last night's christmas party, I discovered two brand new additions to my daily double.

1. Apparently, I do a jaw-droppingly fine, intoxicated, baritone version of Besame Mucho which was, thankfully, explained to me after several strangers kept singing it at me and giving me the thumbs-up sign this morning. (I thought I'd landed in an 80s pepsi commercial set in Puerto Rico).
2. And my sister's got her own blog. Which officially makes me the biggest trendsetter since MC Hammer. Oh don't deny it. Everybody owned a couple of parachute pants in their day.

Princess Nisa's blog is for all those overachievers who just don't know what to do with all that extra time they have on their hands after signing autographs, kissing babies and swimming in vaults full of money. So mosey on over if you think you've got what it takes. And just for good measure, here's a video of Andrea Bocelli trying to imitate my vocal genius and failing terribly (oh the humanity!).

Ho Ho Ho

Just to get in the spirit of the holidays here in the west, (which of course are totally secular. who said they weren't?) I want to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year! Ah christmas. A time for gullible young kids to hang up socks over the fireplace, hoping to see them filled up with whatever kids want these days (I hear food is a popular choice in Darfur), safe in the knowledge that good old Santa Claus will have them filled up come morn.

Those young 'uns with their untainted innocence will swallow just about anything. Harmless myths such as these are by no means to be confused with good old-fashioned reasonable adult ones. Like the one about the half-human half-spirit child growing up to raise the dead. Or that one-man bridge-construction team with a name that rhymes with 'hoses' and of course - Thinly disguised satirical jab at Islam deleted for the safety of the author -.

That's why Scientology will never work. Outer space alien infections? That stuff just doesn't make sense. Why couldn't they have just talked about aphrodisiac apples and boats which could hold representative duets of all creation like the rest of us? Wait..boats? Apples? I think I smell an idea for the world's most original punch bowl. Happy holidays everyone. Enjoy them while they last.

No, Virginia, There Was No Iron Maiden

If I was a young Goth child I would be kicking and screaming in a black leather straitjacket. With metal spikes. And nipple clamps. Because, I was just rudely awakened from a happy jaunt through the instruments of torture used during the 15th and 16th centuries when I came across the revelation that the Iron maiden (lovely little deathbox pictured above) was a 19th century hoax!!! How dare those frilly-pantalooned puffy-shirted liars build up our hopes about the extent of human cruelty only to have it shattered by the ugly, mediocre, relatively painless truth?!!!

Our only consolation is that thumbscrews, the seven stations of the cross and drawing and quartering did exist (in simpler, happier times), as far as we know. As far as I ever want to know!!!

Music Makes The People Come Together...Yeah!

Maybe Bono is rubbing off on local Maldivian musicians (figuratively). I have it from a reliable source that the Generation X of Maldivian music is planning a benefit concert for a girl named Alysha who is in the terminal stages of Thalassemia. The venue of the show which is to be held on the 7th of December is the post-apocalyptic Mad Max-ian wasteland which once was, but is still referred to as a Carnival by us. Proceeds from the show are to fund the little lady's bone marrow transplant procedure.

The night of the 7th of December is also the date that coordinators of a beach party at Bandos jr. have chosen for a night of revelry and debauchery featuring a DJ or DJs from the UK. So which will it be for partygoers and night-owls? Entertainment as social service or just for the sake of it? Bono-ism (dibs on the patent for that word) or Caligula-ism (likewise)? Dance mixes and club music or death metal covers? Socialism or consumerism? Totally a matter of choice. As for me I can't be at either so my conscience is clear no matter how many puppies I kill or old widows I rob over here.

L Is For Lesbians

I've spent the better part of last week catching up on my newest obsession. Showtime's The L Word. It's unclear for me exactly why I started watching this show. I know two important things. I'm a straight guy and this show is about physically attractive lesbians. But I can't for the life of me figure out the connection between them. It's the world's most complicated two-piece puzzle.

To say the show exceeds expectations would be an understatement. Even the kind of expectations someone who bought a Barker Lounger, twelve rolls of toilet paper and a bottle of baby oil especially for viewing comfort would have had before watching three seasons of this show. It's so well-written that it can distract you from all the girl-on-girl action going on (and that, my friends, is no small feat).

A word of caution though. This is not a show for everyone as the warnings, before the show's trademark retrospective prologue, intone in a deeply forbidding voice (do they use the same viewer-discretion-is-advised-guy for all the shows or is there some kind of training camp?). Still, if you're able to overcome any prejudices you have against alternative lifestyles and decide to stop ignoring the elephants in your rooms (especially when those elephants are slender, undeniably hot, lesbians) then start tivo-ing mainstream schlock like Desperate Housewives/Prison Break/Lost etc. so that you can watch them after a two day marathon of The L Word.

Just to give you a taste of what the show is about without giving too much away, here's a trailer for the third season which was tastefully done to Fisher's version of the Nat King Cole classic L.O.V.E.. Why? Because the L in The L Word stands for love you dirty-minded simpletons!

Hilton Arc de Triomphe

There are your average whores, and then there's Paris Hilton. A woman who, singlehandedly, overturned years of research social workers put into establishing a link between abject poverty and prostitution. So, needless to say, it was a complete shock to hear that the people behind the Billboad Music Awards would ask this saint, this paragon of virtue, to make a mockery of her friends on live television. I have no idea what she was required to say but knowing Paris, which I do on a first name basis apparently, it was vulgarity such as you've never heard before. Because this is a woman with principles.

So take notes impressionable young women. You can snigger in the background when someone with you makes colorful remarks (firecrotch comes to mind) about your friends, you can be delusional about your lack of talent, you can be completely amoral and sexually promiscuous, even allowing to be filmed in the act, but never, I repeat, never attend the Billboard Music Awards. Because they stand for everything that is wrong with music today. And for the sake of establishing some relevance to the subject of this post, Paris Hilton's music, for lack of a better word, sucks!!

Just to show them how it's done, here's a video of Kyle Riabko performing his song, What Did I Get Myself Into, at The Knitting Factory. A better artist and a much better venue as a showcase of talent.

Moses Goes To High School

There is so much we can learn from history. Even from history written by historians of dubious credibility. Maybe even from movies based on them. Because lessons from the past are still applicable in our everyday lives and what can't be used can always be stored away as information. For example, I don't remember The Ten Commandments having such an awesome soundtrack when I watched it, and it's possible that A-list stars such as Charlton Heston overshadowed Sinead O'Connor's role in this movie. All the more reason to check out the trailer below to refresh your memories.