That’s what makes him super!

June 20, 2005

Well connected Rich businessman Aduguna Sutowo got sentenced to 7 years on Friday – New years day, this guy had pulled out a pistol and shot a barman in the head over an altercation as to whether a bill had been paid or not – he did it in full view of numerous witness’s in the main bar of the Hilton Hotel here in Jakarta – 7 years – and the reduced sentence is because judges considered a letter from the family of the victim supporting (yes supporting!) the accused!!!! Something’s not right there surely! They say common sense is not that common but Christ on a bike you’d think that anyone with a semblance of powerful influence looking at this would see there is something rotten and intervene! And Schapelle Corby gets 20 years for 4.1kgs of Mari-jo!

Good job Indonesia - a legal system so fucked up it makes Califiornia look level headed (MJ, OJ, Rodney King...it’s the place to go if you want to commit crime! almost impossible to get convicted! and it’s hot and sunny!)

Jakarta might indeed be a bit of corrupt shit hole but there are fantastic plus points to living out here as opposed to the western world – sure, most of this is based around the value of the western wage against the local currency – but the uncontrolled availability of pirate goods is another huge plus point. For under $1 you can buy a DVD or CD of any film/album you can think of from the vendors stalls based in the back of Ratu Plaza – sometimes they are shitty cinema camera jobs, sometimes the film gets all fecked up and stilted, sound and picture out of synch, frame freeze, stuff like that – but they always take back any dodgy ones and replace if they can – plus regular buyers always get the good advice for the girls behind the stalls – “ini Bagus?” “no meester, tidak bagus – very bad copy” – begging the question of why sell it in the first place I suppose, but then depending on the film you can sometimes put up with crappy stds.

I’m watching a lot of OZ and Without a Trace right now – my two latest discoveries from the very best of US TV – these follow the likes of buying box sets of the West Wing, Deadwood, Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, The Shield, 24, CSI, Boomtwon, Simpson’s, Alias…. With the box sets you can get much more sucked into the characters and stories than you would catching the odd weekly show – plus as far as the seller is concerned 6 disc box set = $6 – so you can take risks on stuff you might not like only to be surprised by how good it is and why you’ve never tapped into it before. What was I watching all those years the Soprano’s was on and I never really cared it existed!?! It’s the greatest TV pogramme ever made for gods sake! and it is now impossible to watch the antics of the US government without thinking that it all really does go on behind the scenes just like the West wing. I’d vote for Bartlett – even if he did lie about the MS thing.

Saturday was another classic night of loaf at Robin & Yvettes place – evening rolls around and wine starts flowing, barbecue hots up, good music from Death Cab for Cutie and Razor light and good friends shooting the breeze – well, shooting the humidity. The evening ended around 3 or 4am and we had moved on to destroying a bottle of Absolute – The Confederations cup was on and Robin and I argued about whether Patrick Viera should play for Senegal or France – a subject neither of us really care about in real life but under the influence of Vodka seemed willing to die for.

Earlier we could of watched Batman Begins, but decided to wait for the cinema release next week as it is looking like its going to be a damn fine film – The director of Memento is always going to bring something to the table, while if ever there was an actor that could do a decent job of giving suspension of disbelief to the whole idea of some rich guy being a dark brooding bit fucked up in the head vigilante dressed up as a bat and then Christian Bale is it. Besides we have luxury cinemas out here – complete with waiters, beer, lazy boy seats and blankets – when a film is worth seeing it is worth seeing in the true exalted loafdom that these cinemas provide.

I always used to argue with a good friend of mine, Darcy, that Batman was just a nutter in a suit and not a real superhero like Wolverine or the Silver surfer – the problem with this argument is that instead of being 10 years old, we had it when we were 18 and fiercely ruined on amphetamines sitting in a field somewhere – these arguments would get quite heated and animated at times –
“he can’t fucking fly and he has no super powers! you fucking asshole!”
“that’s what makes him super! you cuntbubble!”

– and so on – then we would see a deer or rabbit – get momentarily distracted and forget the subject of conversation – moving on to the many ways that Kylie Minogue is the finest woman on the planet and Matt Le Tissier the greatest footballer ever to grace the beautiful game (even if he was a bit lazy) – here we found agreement – but Batman was a sticking point forever more – maybe Batman Begins can finally convince me of Darcy’s convictions.