COCKS, CONDOMS & COCKROACHES

Last year a Trinidadian musician was kind enough to help me out with my final Master’s journalism project, so when a year later he contacted me asking for help on his website, I didn’t hesitate to say yes.

I did, however, hesitate when he insisted on us doing “something fun” alongside our website discussions.

Granted, my recent life since I became a working stiff had gotten fairly boring, but I was still a bit skeptical about attending the event he suggested, which a friend of his was throwing: ladies’ night with male strippers.

I had no idea male stripping was legal in Trinidad. Or female stripping for that matter.

Regardless, I wound up at the event — and my escort, the musician, wasn’t even allowed to sit in the audience since it was ladies’ night.

He hovered somewhere behind with the other males, while I sat in the audience losing whatever smidgen of innocence I might have had left.

But hold up. I’m getting ahead of myself.

Condoms and cockroaches

My first inclination that the night would be interesting was upon entry, when I dutifully collected my free drink from the effeminate (and gorgeous) twink waiter-boy wearing a beaded necklace and gold glitter spandex pants with a huge bulge in the front, and picked up a couple of free condoms (both male and female, mind you!) by the bar.

My escort introduced me to his friends as “a journalist”, though I was already well aware that I would be journalisting nothing tonight.

I made my way over to the rickety chairs surrounding the stage, to sit amidst a thick fog of insect repellant — the purpose of which soon became evident when a few dozen cockroaches scuttled by .

The MC for the night was a man wearing a tube top as a skirt, with a brown cold-weather parka (in 35-degree Trini weather!) and hair in tiny plaits scattered over his head. His makeup was appalling, but not even a fraction as imposing as the lewd suggestive remarks to the crowd.

The first performer was Chi-wa, a slender-bodied Trinidadian graphic artist of Chinese descent. He wore ample tattoos and piercings, and proceeded to draw on himself with a black marker.

His long body contorted rhythmically to the music as he writhed on a chair and peeled off his clothing, until he finally pulled at his underwear suggestively before hiding the goods from the audience that screamed “TAKE IT OFF!”

Erotic art, perhaps?

Well, it was meant to be. It was certainly the most artistic piece.

The night soon descended into gross decadence.

Cutters and Candyman

There was “Cutters” – a teenage boy with a pair of scissors that managed to go on for at least half an hour cutting strips of cloth from his animal-print boxers but still managing to hide the goods — until an audience member finally snatched it away as he walked through the crowd when he left the stage.

He kept looking at the audience with something that surely was meant to be seduction but sadly came off as merely bewildered exhibitionism.

There was “Candyman” – who took off a sweater, a forest-green vest, black roomy pants, and then allowed an audience member to disrobe him from the multicoloured net shorts with underwear that unraveled at the pull of a string.

He proceeded to jump atop my lap despite my insistent shoves and pleads to get the hell away.

Congo and Cunt

There was “Oompawoompa” – whose silhouette scampered across a white sheet as he masturbated and beat his flaccid penis on the back of a chair.

The Mighty Sparrow’s “Congo Man” (tsk tsk, if the Birdie only knew about this usage of his song!) played on and on and on repeatedly as the audience grew restless.

A huge round of applause exploded when he finally pulled back on his yellow-and-red thong and ran off the stage in a Carnival mask.

There was “Office Boy” – a good-looking sex-god with dreadlocks, crawling around on the stage to “You Spin Me Right Round Baby Right Round” as he quivered his pectoral muscles and peeled off his shirt, jacket, “Cunt my anti-drug” t-shirt, knee-length shorts, grey vest, grey brief shorts, and thong under that (wayyyy too much wrapping to get to the present).

Why couldn’t he be the one who insisted on humping me, instead of Candyman? (But I digress….)

Cocktails and cock

Showerman took the cake, though.

While every other performer flirted with nudity but held back that vital shred of cloth, Showerman went all out under the hose and bucket as he rocked back and forth on the steps, exposing full frontal (and well-endowed) nudity, to the rampant cheers of the ecstatic audience.

But the real performer — who was called back repeatedly by request — was Barman, who shook it up and stirred it up to the female delight, removing his jeans behind the apron to expose tight black-and-red briefs and a six-pack washboard stomach, to the tune of “Blame It On The Alcohol” (what else?)

There were a few more that, thankfully, I missed when I ran off to use the bathroom after someone dumped some beer on my legs…

At the end the boys/men all lined up for a final dance-off, and then many of them humped a few ladies in the audience (thankfully this time no one came near me for humping purposes).

One did, however, come up to extend his hand on my way out.

“I’m Martin,” he said politely.

I shook his hand and said my name before I hightailed it out of there.

Journalisting…

As anticipated, no journalisting got done that night — it took me a full week and a half to process the night to even bang out this blog review.

What journalisting should I have done, now that I think of it?

What do you ask a young Trini man who is beating his penis against the back of a chair for a ladies’ night extravagazna?

“So… how did you get into stripping?”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“Does it pay well?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?” (…Or boyfriend, for that matter?… I’m open-minded)

“So, like… does your body (read: penis) have to be a particular dimension to qualify to enter this event?”

“…Little boy, WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS?”

Hmmm….

But the night was memorable and at times even enjoyable, journalisting or no journalisting.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me, ever the world-weary trekker to all corners of the globe, methinks: London, oh sweet pedagogue of so much, London my love… YOU DID NOT PREPARE ME FOR THIS.

But, I suppose, it was good to know there are many corners of Trinidad I have yet to experience.

……………………………..It wasn’t until I was in the car on the way home that I realised the last thing Martin touched before he touched my hand… was most likely his penis.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A TRINI TALE…

Argh… the long silences.

By the time I remember I mean to be writing regularly on this blog, a month or two have flashed by.

By the time I think to comment further on what’s gone by – politics, for example – it’s already stale.

By the time I sit to write, everything I want to say has left my head.

Something must be done about this!

Indeed.

…But what?

Finding time to find time

Where do we manufacture time, where do we fabricate industrious vocabularies and magnificent splendour in literary etchings on the Web?

I don’t know.

But forget the normal blog rules about needing tags and categories and links to other sites, and all that.

I don’t have time to find time to have time to come up with wonderful ideas for blogging anymore!

From now on I will just write.

Today I thought I would share something.

Those who know me will be well aware of the very few times I will make a nice comment on my country.

So here’s one for the books (and in Trini slang, screw the Grammar Nazism rules!):

A Trini tale

Rainy season hit. You know we don’t get rain all the time so when it rain it rain plenty plenty.

So me on meh way home ah day, I sit down in a maxi-taxi, rain pounding de window and de roof and all kinda ting.

A woman, few seat in fronta me, she start frantically searching thru she bag.

Like she eh find wat she lookin for so she tun round and ask a nex woman, “Aye excuseee… you have a plastic bag I cud borrow?”

The next woman give she a plastic bag. Then she tun to a next fella and ask for piece of the papers he reading. So she get that too – he give she the front and last page leaf, coz that not important: “same shit different day, only politics and crime,” he say as he hand she.

So Miss Lady now, she proceed to start folding up the piece of newspaper into a funny shape.

Then she wrap the funny shape round her hair like a turban, and put the plastic bag on top of that.

She find some clip in her bag to hold the whole contraption to her head.

Then bout two minutes after she finish, she press the bell to stop the maxi.

And if you see meh girl, walking out high and proud, crossing road, cool and calm, getting soaking wet… but the hair covered.

Nobody in the maxi bat an eyelash.

The woman who did give her the plastic bag smile as she look out the window at Miss Lady.

She know the feeling, yuhknow… who care bout rain, as long as you don’t waste your trip to the hairdresser!

Only in Trinidad.

Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes… you just got to love it.

THE SINGLE STORY

I was sent this link by a friend from Spain, who I attended university with in London.

I’ve been to Spain three times. I’ve also studied Spanish for 8 years of my life.

But what do I really know about the country? — a vague sense of its historical background, its music, its culture, its language.

And what do I really know about the classmate who sent it to me? We had mutual friends, and probably knew a lot ABOUT each other — both good and bad.

At least, in both cases, despite the lack of a comprehensive whole understanding or appreciation, there were different stories.

I did not judge the country by one place I visited or one thing I’d seen on TV; and though I never knew him personally, I did not judge my classmate by the country he came from, or by one thing I’d overheard from a friend.

Single stories

I find Chimamanda Adichie‘s piece riveting.

To my memory and knowledge, I have not yet read a single Nigerian text. Yes, perhaps, this flaunts my ignorance, but I did not grow up with Nigerian texts.

I have never seen a Nigerian film. I’ve seen glimpses or previews through friends and clips online, but I’ve never traipsed out to the cinema to see one. I can’t remember ever seeing one showing at a nearby cinema.

What I know of Nigeria comes from television, and from friends I met (which introduces a scary idea: what if I’d never met these friends? Would I, then, have a “single story” — Hollywood’s sad solitary portrayal?).

At university, we would laugh at how Africa was portrayed by the West, how Hollywood films like Mean Girls talked about Africa like it was wilderness, and — even worse — that Africa was one country… despite the fact that it was a continent contained of several different cultures and governed accordingly.

Trinidadian writing

I suppose I experienced a similar childhood to this prolific Nigerian writer.

My father loved literature and would give me books by Naipaul like “Miguel Street” and “A House For Mr Biswas”.

They seemed foreign to me.

The books I was borrowing from the library (on my sister’s card, since I was too young to join!) were from Enid Blyton and Judy Blume.

Parents hugged children and said “I love you”, things were always resolved. There was no abuse, no abject poverty, no cringing shame of one’s existence beyond tepid teenage angst.

It was a nicer world that what Trinidadian literature had to offer me.

A Caribbean tale

And so, when I wrote (and I wrote a LOT as a child), I wrote for a US or UK audience. I wrote things I liked to read.

Teachers were thrilled I wrote. They didn’t care what. Most children could not string a sentence together, and there I was, producing stories and naive novels at the age of eight.

Then, secondary/high school began.

“The Secret Garden” (UK) was the Form 1 book.

Form Two was “The Pearl” (US).

Only in Form 3, when students were able to choose whether or not they wanted to continue doing Literature as a subject, did a Caribbean book appear: “Annie John” (Antigua).

I did not like Annie John. It was too stark, too familiar, not foreign enough. It made me uncomfortable.

Reproducing the cycle

I suppose, that is the fate of the contrasting sides of the coin – a displacement of self.

I’ve discussed it with a couple of amazing Trinidadian writers, Roslyn Carrington and Lisa Allen-Agostini (which I wrote about in an article you can read here), and discovered that I’m not alone in that feeling.

If they identify with that internal war, what does the future hold for generations to come, with more and more foreign media influences?

I don’t write Trinidadian or Caribbean stories. And now that I am older, the world is no longer content just that I write but now it’s become an issue of what I write.

I have to represent Trinidad, I have to represent the Caribbean, I have to represent the developing world.

My writing has halted entirely.

I have no idea where to begin to write a “Trinidadian” novel.

Interestingly, I’ve found that my writings tend to leave out “place” entirely…

Here, kitty-kitty! – the symbol of the cat

My dad recently sent me this link from an article in the Trinidad Express (http://www.trinidadexpress.com/index.pl/article?id=161460750), which got me to thinking about cats as symbols, scientific and historical creatures.

There is a somewhat negative association when you say that someone is a “cat person”, not to mention the saying that someone “will die alone except for his/her cats”.

While I’m sure that more people have been seriously injured from dogs or other domesticated animals, it seems to me that more people fear or dislike cats. Where does this come from?

What is it about the crafty feline that unnerves us so, when — for all intents and purposes — cats are more similar to humans than most other creatures.  

While it is widely believed — and scientifically proven — that apes and monkeys are closer to human DNA, I’m inclined to think that cats are actually more human-like than any other living creature.

Of course, I could be biased because around 30 cats have passed through my household in the 20-odd years of my life so far.

(At present, my cats at home fight for my dad’s attention, and the one we’ve had for 9 years seems to believe she is married to him and can’t seem to understand why my mother is around all the time trespassing on her territory.)

The science of cats

It has, however, been proven that the X and Y chromosomes of cats and humans are remarkably alike, reports Genome News Network.

The two species, however, haven’t shared a common ancestor for around 90 million years when the human race was linked to goats, sheeps and cows.

This discovery may help scientists to better understand male infertility and human genetics – as well as helping to preserve endangered cat species.

Apart from science, the aura surrounding felines has a long presence in ancient history.

Worship the kitty

Though originally a wild species useful mainly for controlling vermin and snake populations in ancient Egypt, cats became domesticated over time and even became the core focus of a religion centred around the worship of animals.

The goddess Mafdet – deification of justic and execution – was a lion-headed goddess, eventually replaced by the cat goddess Bastet, whose image softened over time to become the deity that represents protection, fertility and motherhood. (You can read more about it here and here.)

The religious issue surrounding cats is so strong that there is even a debate that true Christians should not be associated with cats because they are elements of pagan beliefs.

Though, to the best of my knowledge, no one in the modern world still worships cats, I’ve been around enough cats to know that as a race, they still expect to be worshipped. And there is something indescribably mysterious — and possibly holy — about the cat.

Something about the way they move, slinking so easily… pouncing on their prey (whether another animal or a piece of fluff floating in the air)… the wide eyes glowering and swallowing you in its darkness. Something eerie. Something devilish.

The era of Scotty

I once had a cat that was just pure evil. Scotch — Scotty — lived for only two years before succumbing to the fatal decision to eat a poisoned rat, but his memory lives on.

When we first got him, he was so violent. He also urinated and defecated EVERYWHERE – each time picking a different spot because he saw how that aggravated my mother.

We tried to lock him out of the house. He squeezed in through the bricks to lay a load of a present in the middle of my parents’ bed.

If you didn’t feed him on Monday, he would lie in wait on Friday to leap out from behind a chair to attack you, all twenty claws out as he leapt and scraped down the length of your body.

If you spoke ill of him, his ears flicked and his eyes narrowed. He knew.

He laughed at us, foolish humans succumbing to his every wish.

We loved him, yes, but a part of each of us was afraid that one day we would wake up to see him on top our stomachs, one wicked lip curled as he prepared to pounce. 

Is evil hereditary?

He eventually ‘married’ and moved his ‘wife’ (a stray) into our house, soon accompanied by 6 and then 5 kittens in another litter.

We were afraid to let him get near his own children lest he eat them, for pure fun.

The day he was dying — a slow, painful death that he seemed to prolong just so that he could die on my fifteenth birthday — was the first day that the kittens could freely roam the house.

His daughter, the 9-year-old who we kept from the first litter, still thinks she owns our house — not to mention my father.

Though the sweetest, most loving and nurturing creature imaginable, sometimes we still see the glimmer of Scotty in her eye……….

Plugged in: enroll me to Second Life

 

We are still far away from Matrix-style ‘uploading’ directly into our brains, but virtual reality in the form of Second Life may soon replace the classroom.

Ofsted’s recent survey shows that Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs) for schools have been slower to take off than expected, failing to “enthuse” students, reports the BBC.

VLEs were found to be a “dumping ground” for rarely-used files, rather than an interactive forum to enhance teaching in a classroom.

But what if we didn’t need classrooms? What if we rolled out of bed, unbrushed and unshowered, and logged in to class?

Far-fetched, perhaps, but that’s the modus operandi of Second Life.

From Virtual Learning Environment to Social Virtual World

Dr. Li Jin, Course Leader of MSc Computer Animation at Westminster University, thinks virtual worlds are a powerful teaching medium.

Her research examines how Social Virtual Worlds (SVWs) transform the nature of learning as social practice, and aims to design an innovative platform which combines SVWs with conventional VLEs.

She says: “With increasingly pervasive high-speed networking connections and the technological evolution of Internet technology, SVWs have emerged to facilitate social interaction, combining efficient visual communication, integration of rich media, and the share of user-generated content in a collaborative environment.

“They have expanded and challenged ideas of the next generation of virtual learning environment.”

Second Life art

SVW Second Life (SL), a downloadable client program inspired by the cyperpunk movement, enables ‘residents’ to interact with each other through motional avatars in the ‘metaverse’.

Though akin to social networks like Facebook, it is differentiated by its rich graphics platform that fosters an immersive 3D environment.

SL residents can sell avatar designs, display ‘real art’ and also create ‘virtual art’ with the 3D modeling tool, which may be impossible to create in the real world due to physical constraints or high costs.

Countries including Sweden and The Maldives have virtual ’embassies’, ‘live’ concerts and rallies take place, and Second Life has even hosted a virtual Inaugural Ball for US President Obama.

Second Life: the new distance-learning

SL, which offers discounted rates to educators to purchase campus land, has a large education community including leading universities Harvard, Iowa State, Stanford and The Open University.

SL is also a valuable medium for organisations such as the NMC, which fosters shared learning among educators by running inworld seminars and conferences related to virtual worlds.

Though distance learning has existed for decades, Second Life – with over 2 million users worldwide – opens a wealth of new possibilities.

Reincarnating themselves in an avatar, teleporting to different worlds, flying, hopping on a unicorn to gallop up to a tall building hovering over a glimmering city to get to class…

In a fantasy world where the laws of physics don’t necessarily apply, Second Life is certainly more interesting than the regular educational droll. But this does not mean that it is all fun and games.

Vassar College constructed a virtual Sistine Chapel to explore how SL could be used for art classes, University of California-Davis created a place to train emergency aid workers, and students at Texas University’s Genome Island in SL can perform virtual experiments.

Second Life setbacks

Second Life is not conducive to traditional lecturing, as streaming real-time audio is difficult. But as its supporters point out, this is not necessarily a disadvantage – classes are less professor-centred.

Also, the non-linear fashion of discussion that emerges from many people being able to type in real-time simultaneously (as opposed to the din that would emerge if they all spoke at the same time) can be productive for the development of ideas.

As Science Daily quotes Bill Ditto, chairman of Florida University’s Department of Biomedical Engineering: “Second Life will make you think about the real world rules and possibilities a little differently.”

Child abuse: stopped at delivery room

 

He was stabbed in the stomach, smashed against a mirror, forced to eat his own vomit, and had his face smeared in his brother’s dirty diaper.

These were only some of the ordeals Dave Pelzer faced under the domineering thumb of his alcoholic mother, in one of the worst cases of child abuse that California has ever seen.

With the release (24/03/09) of the research findings in Child Abuse and Neglect, and the recent controversy over newborn ‘Baby D’, child abuse is once more at the forefront of news media, just as it was over a decade ago with Pelzer’s autobiographical book “A Child Called It“.

‘Baby D’ has been seized from the arms of his parents within seconds of his birth, in an unprecedented high court ruling that dictated that the parents should not be informed about this decision beforehand.

This was believed to be in the best interest of the child’s safety, though under the Human Rights Act, prospective parents have a right to private and family life and should therefore have been informed.

Role of child protection services

The mother, who is in prison for threatening her young daughter with a knife, had previously told a social worker that her children would be “better off dead than in the council’s care”, reports the Guardian.

This case has demonstrated the “root and branch shake up” of child protection services that Children’s Secretary Ed Balls has admitted is necessary to protect children in the wake of the Baby P scandal.

The devastating end to Baby P’s life, and the media controversy surrounding it, has raised awareness of the issue of child abuse.

Dave Pelzer’s story, “A Child Called It: one child’s struggle to survive”, had a similar impact in the US in the mid-90’s.

‘A Child Called It’

“A Child Called It” chronicles one of the most severe child abuse cases in California’s history.

The first part of his autobiographical trilogy tells the story of Dave’s childhood. The abuse escalated at the tender age of seven, and continued until his ‘rescue’ at the age of 12.

Pelzer was burnt on a stove, had ammonia forced down his throat, put to lie in a bathtub full of freezing water for hours, and made to sit in the ‘prisoner of war’ position.

He was also excluded from family vacations, forced to live in the basement, denied human contact, and starved as punishment.

Child as object

The most powerful part of Pelzer’s story is the point that translates through every story, whether real or fictional, of child abuse: the objectification of the child.

No longer a son, and treated even worse than a slave, Dave’s mother referred to him as “The Boy”, and eventually simply “It”.

Another similar point between Dave’s story and Baby P’s is the involvement of social services: in Dave’s case it took years of suspicion and investigation to result in his ‘rescue’.

Baby P, unfortunately, was never rescued.

Had he survived, at the rate of abuse he had been subjected to, his file would have grown to exceed Pelzer’s in the number of incidents in which his life was threatened by parental abuse.

Abused as abuser or activist

Pelzer has turned his abuse into something positive – unlike in many cases where the abused becomes the abuser, as depicted in the film The Cell, and in the role of T-Bag in the drama series Prison Break.

Dave has won awards for his writing and has accumulated presidential commendations for his work as a motivational speaker.

The world will never know what Baby P could have become.

Has the case of ‘Baby D’ shown a new direction in the role of child services that will change the future of child abuse cases?

Was their decision too drastic a measure… or can this ‘pre-emptive strike’ save a child’s life?

Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum

Brangelina sans baby-brood for a change, Morgan Freeman hobnobbing with an unspectacled and almost unrecognisable Harry Potter, a smirking John Wayne flanking a scowling gun-toting James Dean, a menacing Vlad the Impaler, and the mangled bloodied corpse of Guy Fawkes.

Where else can one find this queer concoction, but in the wax museum of Madame Tussaud’s?

Situated just a few metres from the Baker Street tube station and The Great Detective immortalized in stone, Madame Tussaud’s is one of the most popular attractions in London, bringing in tourists from all over the world as well as locals eager to catch a glimpse of their favourite celebrities immortalized in wax.

It also had branches in Amsterdam, Berlin, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York and Washington D.C. – and its Hollywood branch is imminent later this year.

Kitsch disco

In the original Madame Tussaud’s in London, monochrome wallpaper paparazzi and nondescript pop music welcome its newest visitors upon the automatic opening of the elevator doors.

The pink-lit floor tiles and surrounding glass panels evoke the sentiment of a disco ball. First on the agenda is the A-list celebrity room, chocked full of stars too famous to need a nameplate.

Herded by the human throng from themed room to themed room – Premiere Night, Sports Arena, A Royal Appointment, Music Megastars, Behind the Scenes, Warhol’s Women, and the horror house Scream – the tour winds up at a ride in simulated black cabs through a tepid mini-rollercoaster of The Spirit of London, a historical tour of the city through the ages. 

The sickly-sweet aroma of fudge wafts amidst the Royals and historical British heroes of the Arts.

Scream, Scene, Souvenir

In the Scream room, the eerieness is dampened by the almost-pitch-darkness that cloaks blood only properly visible on the LCD camera screen.

The Behind the Scenes room contains the oldest figure on display – ‘Sleeping Beauty’ Madame Du Barry, her wax chest rising and falling in tandem to her deep breaths of slumber.

The voice of R&B megastar Beyonce explains the stages of the process of wax sculpting on the PA system, while the physical stages are laid out for the eye to admire.

Personalised souvenirs are a la mode – from “make your own award” to “get your own wax hand mould done”.

The pungent paraffin wax does no harm to the dapper James Bond (a la Daniel Craig) standing across the room from his Devil-Without-A-Cause motorbike – which is one of the few non-wax ‘real’ sights to see, complete to a tee with rust and spackled mud.

Maintenance and updating

The figures require constant maintenance – with thousands of daily visitors touching them, they are likely to get worn or broken.

They also require frequent updating.

“Every two months or so we change the clothes on some of the big female stars like Beyonce, Britney and Madonna,” says Shackera, who originally comes from Jamaica and has been working as a full-time Tussaud’s attraction host for over a year.

“Also if the star gets a new tattoo, we will put it on their wax figure.”

Though Shackera – and the information available in the ‘Behind the Scenes’ room – state that celebrities do sittings that last longer than three hours to provide up to two hundred measurements and dozens of photographs to ensure 100% accuracy; Bradley, who has been working at Tussaud’s for six years, says that many figures have been done without sittings.

Lewd shenanigans

It is, without a doubt, more touristy than your average museum – and certainly more well-attended on the average day.

It is virtually impossible to escape being captured in someone’s camera frame, and perhaps even harder to get your own photo with the figure without pushing aside other people to get close to it.

With the most popular exhibitons, only the Tussaud’s photographers are allowed to take photos, and the Obama Oval Office tops that list, followed by the newest figure, racing legend Lewis Hamilton.

Despite admiration and excitement, bodily weariness abounds, and the lewd shenanigans of visitors – feeling Will Smith’s biceps, stroking David Beckham’s crotch, grinding on Shakira’s legs, posing for a photo with a head under Marilyn Munroe’s skirt – eventually lose their humour.

But the escape is near… just around that corner, just up that stairs, down that stairs, through this hallway… through that other throng of wax-star-worshippers.

Don’t forget to leave suggestions for new wax figures at the eventual end of the maze – and the obligatory souvenir shop, of course.

Tobago’s Great Fete Weekend – a decade of debauchery

 

 

With ample alcohol, booming sound systems and top Caribbean musicians, Tobago’s Great Fete Weekend is ‘relllll hottup’ — as locals say — and so are partygoers, outfitted in bikini-tops, short-shorts and the wildest waistlines gyrating on that side of the Atlantic.

This July 29th to August 3rd marks a decade since the first Great Fete Weekend, a five-night party on Pigeon Point Beach in Tobago, Trinidad’s smaller sister-isle with a population of only 54,000.

Dubbed ‘the Caribbean’s Spring Break’ because of its reputation as a no-holds-barred extended weekend of work-free debauchery — similar to Spring Break in the US, Great-Fete is dwarfed by Trinidad’s world-famous Carnival celebrations in February-March.

The Fete showcases the best of Caribbean music, with artistes over the years ranging from soca stars Bunji Garlin, KMC and Superblue; to rapso group 3 Canal, chutney singer Hunter and dancehall artiste Mr. Vegas.

This year’s tenth anniversary will feature reggae-dancehall entertainers Beenie Man and Busy Signal — and that is as much as its founder, Kevan Gibbs, is willing to reveal.

Gibbs: ‘the wickest party’

“We never say who’s performing… so at anytime, anyone can run on stage,” he explains.

This element of surprise has worked well, amplifying the mysterious magnetic pull to the Caribbean melting pot of music and people shaking and grinding to whichever beat comes on.

Great-Fete is the brainchild and baby of Gibbs, a graphic artist, seasoned partygoer and Founder of Sandbox Entertainment.

He established the Fete as one of the various parties that complemented the annual 84-mile powerboat Great Race from the Yacht Club in Trinidad’s Gulf of Paria to Store Bay in Tobago. Great Fete soon grew in size and splendour — so much that when Great Race moved to late August, the Fete retained its foothold on the first weekend of the month. It now draws in crowds four times larger than the Race.

The kernel of an idea for the Fete began with the beach.

Pigeon Point Beach was well-known as the location of the best post-Race party, until in 1998 its management stopped renting it out, forcing parties to move to Canoe Bay — a disjunction if ever there was one, in Gibbs’ opinion.

He convinced them to change their mind, promising to throw the ‘wickest Great Race Party ever’ at Pigeon Point Beach the following year.

Great Fete Weekend: the birth

When August 1999 rolled around, Great Fete Weekend was born. Then, it only lasted from Friday to Sunday.

In its second year, Thursday was added to the lineup, with skepticism from Gibbs’ sponsor, who insisted that no one would party for more than three days in a row.

“We made a deal… if it worked, she would double the sponsorship. On the night of the party, she sheepishly said, ‘So… I guess I have money for you’,” laughs Gibbs.

“Great Fete is ideally placed,” says Jamie, a 25-year-old student at the University of the West Indies. “Carnival is long gone, Christmas is too far off, and we’re smack-dab in the middle of holidays when the excitement of no-school nothingness has worn off and boredom sets in. We’re willing to party for five days straight — ten, if need be.”

‘The longest weekend in the world’

The ‘longest weekend in the world’, as it is advertised, now begins with ‘Welcome Wednesday’: free drinks all night, followed by ‘RetroActive Thursday’ when DJs ‘take you back to school’ with songs that are five to ten years old — barely ‘retro’ but seemingly ancient to the young crowd.

Next in the lineup is ‘Fantastik Cooler Fete Friday’ when everyone brings a cooler with their own drinks, followed by ‘Wet Fete Saturday’.

“I named it ‘Wet Fete’ just because of the beach,” recalls Gibbs. “Then on the day, my friends said ‘Hey let’s get a water truck’ and I replied ‘Yuh mad?!’… Later that night a big water truck pulled up, and they tried to slip it inside behind my back. But then the water hit and people went crazy. We were onto something.”

Wet Fete is by far the most popular of the five nights, with last year’s estimates at 8000 patrons compared to Wednesday’s and Thursday’s 1500 each, Friday’s 5000 and Sunday’s 1000 patrons.

“Wet Fete is the best,” says Christian, a 32-year-old loyal Fete-goer for the past seven years. “I don’t think we ever truly grow out of the five-year-old desire to jump around the yard dancing in the rain, sprinklers or a hose… Wet Fete is that, but for adults.”

The Weekend culminates in Insomniac Soca Sunday, which finishes around noon on Monday, when a cash prize of $10,000TT(£1,100) is awarded to the ‘last crew standing’ who attended all the events and still finds energy to jump through whatever hoops the DJ proposes, such as aerobics or running back and forth into the ocean.

‘A rite of passage’

Blossoming from a little beach party into the spectacular event it is today, Great Fete continues to grow in size. However its significance is not universal.

While many go every year, 23-year-old Kyle states: “It was a one-time experience for me. A group of guys packed into a tiny apartment meant for two. We were so broke, but we all wanted to do this. Sleeping three hours a day, lying to your boss to sneak away from work… it was one of the best times of my life — but I wouldn’t spoil it by doing it again.”

Whether a one-time hurrah or a hearty mainstay, Great Fete is an experience to remember. As Gibbs states: “It is really more of a rite of passage than a party.”

Book now!

Currently priced at $400TT(£45) for a season pass to all five nights, the price escalates to $600TT(£70) closer to the event — so it is wise to book tickets long in advance. The same goes for accommodation; with an average of 17,000 partygoers flooding the tiny island, hotels and villas book up rapidly.

Also, traffic jams are often the reason for missing the party altogether, so it is best to find a hotel or guesthouse within walking distance of Pigeon Point Beach, and ensure that there is an air-conditoning unit in the room — the sweltering Caribbean heat is sometimes too much for even the locals to handle.

There are a range of hotel prices to suit every budget. A few helpful sites are:

http://www.wheretostay.com/caribbean/trinidad_and_tobago/lodging-s254-Tobago.html

http://www.mytobago.info/accommodation1/2/1/tobago_hotels.htm

http://www.tobagohotels.co.uk/ 

http://www.exploretobago.com/

Many places offer discount packages for stays of over seven nights, and most villas are only available to rent by the week. So before or after the five-day nonstop partying, squeeze in a day or two to experience the Tobago attractions that draw people in all year round:

Main Ridge Forest, voted as the World’s Leading Ecotourism Destination in 2006 by World Travel Awards; scuba-diving at Speyside, where there are over 300 species of coral, turtles, nurse sharks, manta rays and the largest known brain-coral in the world; bird-watching some of Tobago’s 210 species at Arnos Vale; and glass-bottomed boat tours to view the coral at Buccoo Reef – not to mention the dozens of beaches dotting the coastline.

Visit www.simplytobago.co.uk and www.trintours.com for further details of tours and prices.

99 problems with racism in Hollywood

 

“Son do you know why I’m stoppin’ you for?”

Cause I’m young and I’m black and my hat’s real low?

“Licence and registration and step out of the car”

“Are you carryin’ a weapon on you? I know a lot of you are”

“We’ll see how smart you are when the K9 come”

Jay-Z, “99 Problems”, The Black Album

 

 

The pending outcome of the Race and Faith inquiry has rekindled the matter of racism in the Metropolitan Police in the national news agenda.

Duwayne Brooks, who witnessed the violent death of friend Stephen Lawrence, insists that racism still dominates the Met’s actions.

If we analyse the issue through film, we find several telltale documentaries, such as The Secret Policeman (BBC, 2003) which resulted in the disciplining and the resignation of several officers.

However one of the “99 problems”, to evoke Jay-Z’s terminology, is that institutional racism is not limited to documentary. Fiction also upholds white supremacy.

Mindless escapism or racist text on ‘passing’?

Historically, Hollywood participated in the theatrical practice of ‘blackface‘. Instead of employing ‘coloured’ actors, they hired white actors who darkened their skin to avoid visual ambiguity onscreen, such as in Birth Of A Nation (1915).

‘Passing’ still takes place today, but of a different kind – many ‘non-white’ actors shift between portraying characters of different races.

“As a TV extra in L.A., I have played Armenian, Hispanic, and white characters,” says Rachel, 23, who is of Bolivian and Jewish ancestry. “Once you look ‘ethnic’, they’ll make it work.”

Tokenism: minority of ‘minority’ writers

‘Tokenism’ is also a concern within the entertainment industry. As APF reporter Watkins points out, writers use material from their own experiences, which obscures persons of colour because they are imagining “experiences they can’t conceivably know about.”

Ten years ago, The Hollywood Reporter found that, of the writers employed on primetime dramas and sitcoms on the major television networks the US, only 6.6% were black, 1.3% were Latino, 0.3% were Asian, and there were no native Americans.

In spite of significant advances being made since then, particularly after the merge of The WB with UPN, white writers still remain the majority in Hollywood.

Crash: racism in the police force

Though Hollywood typically suppresses racial discord, Oscar award-winning Crash (2004) looks at the complexities of racial conflict.

Officer Hanson does not intervene when his partner Officer Ryan molests a black woman Christine in an unwarranted ‘stop-and-search’; instead he requests to switch partners.

His Lieutenant, who is black, says, “You don’t mind that there is a racist prick on the force, you just don’t want him to ride in your car.”

This Hollywood line precisely reflects what Duwayne Brooks refers to by his words: “The problems are with senior management. Nobody really wants to change how the Met does things.

“If they really wanted to change, we wouldn’t have the MacPherson report… there would be a natural change because the public would be unhappy about the way they’re being treated.”

A fine line between news and entertainment

The entertainment industry mirrors the real world through news media representations.

In response to allegations that the police did not give a ‘proportional response to all murders, Metropolitan Police Sir Ian Blair replied: “The media is guilty of institutional racism.

“The death of the young lawyer was terrible, but an Asian man was dragged to his death, a woman was chopped up in Lewisham, a chap shot in the head in a Trident murder – they got a paragraph on page 97,” he told the BBC.

Though this comment was made three years ago, we may wonder whether or not anything has changed. Can we say with surety that either the entertainment industry or media gatekeepers have been innocent and neutral when it comes to representing race and racism?

 

 

Travel Writing: “mirroring” Edith Wharton

For Travel Journalism class, which is run by experienced travel journalist Susan Grossman, we were given a passage by travel writer Edith Wharton and told to take a few introductory words from one of her sentences and “mirror” her style of writing.

You can find some of her travel writings here.

This is what I eventually produced… 

 

Travel Writing a la Edith Wharton

And nowhere in the world in this century could one still see something so awkwardly sophisticated. In this darkened light of muted glamour, amidst mismatched chairs and chandeliers hung too low, men sit tapping cigarettes into grimy ashtrays, leering at the ladies sitting cross-legged on the sofas across from them, their lipstick pressed onto napkins beside them, the abandoned remnants of food smeared onto plates perched precariously on tablecloths between their elbows.

Moonlight filters across their faces from the small cracked windowpanes embedded high into walls, and as the tired clock chimes an hour far behind its schedule, someone exerts a hearty guffaw, attracting nearby eyes to watch her head thrown back in triumphant glee. The laughing woman lowers her head and stamps her heeled knee-high boot on the wooden flooring, causing the men in the basement below her to startle and jerk their heads nervously to the ceiling, almost spilling their cards onto the oblong holed table of green felt. A relieved sigh murmurs through the room, dissipating ever so slightly the pervading haze of cigar smoke, liquor and tension.

Ye old ‘speakeasy’

….. Does it remind you of anywhere, or of anything?

If you’re a fan of old films, this may come to mind: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speakeasy

 

Do you know of anywhere that still has something similar to them?