Friday, November 16, 2007

Catalog bio for Fuck Off Guide: Brownstone

Train. 0450. It’s still dark out and everyone else in the carriage is asleep: passed out drunk on the way home, or snoozing their way to work. Or the other way around. Writing bio for the NOP catalog:

“Snatch Brownstone has lived and worked for the last ten years in the Middle East, covering every major event since he started. Except for the ones he missed.”

It might be ten to an hour before normal people wake up but this is half past the middle of the fucking night for me and this third person shit’s having an odd effect on my brain. His brain.

iPod soundtrack for those of you who want recreate this scene at home: Paul Pena scratching out "wait on what you want." Walking out in the Queen City just to get himself straight. Blind as a bat, and about as handsome, it’s hard to imagine Pena walking anywhere straight but, that aside:

“Thrown out now of as many countries as bars, Brownstone’s work has amassed an impressive array of awards while appearing…”

Conceived under the sign of travel (icon: a bloodshot eye gazing listlessly at a laptop), the bio pauses here at a fork in the road. To the left lie the Netherlands of Elision, flat and watery. To the right the more mountainous region of Uttar Bullshit, richly and fecally peopled, an exciting destination, but a dangerous place for the forgetful.

“A lie,” this is Hugh now, Hugh at his most quotable, and most inebriated, sprawled across a couch in the old office like an over inflated sex doll that some pervert had stuffed into a business suit and thrown from the door of a train. “A lie is like a woman.” He paused here and drank straight from the snifter, tipping it back and mailing a couple of backwash bubbles to the surface of whatever aftershave was in there. “Dangerous only when forgotten.”

Well, thanks Hugh. Wherever you are these days. Not much help though. Probably best to leave this bio business for later.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Fuck off Guide: Underground at the Cellar

A subterranean terrarium for fat Egyptian “businessmen” (read fat fuck Victoria College alumni pissing away the capital so tirelessly built up by their grafting soldier daddies) and their molls. Décor is cabana-chic. Heavy on the wood paneling and foam pillows so familiar to the clientelle from their time “pushin’ the cushin'” out at the Saqqara Palm Club. Lighting is subdued to facilitate romantic conversation and hide the jowls. Dress code applies: shirt open to half mast, Rolex three links too big, pants pulled up tight to show off the family jewels. Some kind of minimum charge applies, but if you get here sober enough to care, best be looking for somewhere else to drink for a bit: this is no place to be straight. Menu is about what you would expect. Lots of carbs, overdone steaks slathered in sweet sauce and the desserts are limited to some refrozen ice cream and third rate crème caramel (so romantic, French). Vive le difference ya Moodie. Reminds me of this place I used to know in Tulsa.

Excerpted from Fuck Off Guide to Egypt (NOP Publications, forthcoming).