Back from, believe it or not, a Karaoke bar ...and I had vowed solemnly to never partake in such activity, but, alas, bang goes another New Year Resolution. Not that I intended to make use of my smoked vocal chords - it was more of a favor I owed three students of the School of Fine and Applied Arts at Bangkok University, who gave me a lift day before yesterday when I kind of got lost in Banglampoo district off Khao San Rd. In fact they saved me from complicated negotiations with two transvestites (both very much on the macho side) who mistook my sheepish smile for a business proposal... it's a bit hard to get out of such situations in a polite and face-saving way. Then those two girls and the fattest young Thai I've ever seen turned up, and immediately the tension buildup was reversed. We all had a good healthy laugh at our mutual misunderstandings, and they guarded me back to "secure" Khao San Rd. They were on their way home from some academic action, and had to decline any invitations, except that they'd all would love to go to a certain Karaoke Bar usually frequented by Japanese and Korean tourists, whose attempts they confessed to find incredibly funny.
So they picked me up at 10 pm, and we proceeded to Ratchada Pisek quarters, an establishment called "Cassiopeia". Very stylish by Bangkok standards, with about twenty "private rooms", where you can trust that only your friends will hear your attempts at "In The Ghetto" or such. But of course we headed for the "Concert Room", about 25 seats, and a tourist group from Japan - all male, and deeply in the fangs of demon Alcohol. What is it that makes old Elvis' songs so attractive for middle-class Japanese sararimen? I don't know enough about Japanese music, maybe there are special crossovers? Anyway, we had our fun, especially after dinner and a few beers, when Poo, who says she's a painter, climbed the stairs, strapped on the wireless mike, and gave a pretty good Thai style (no fast movements, no overt erotic) Lady Gaga impersonation. Rove, the guy, topped it with an ironic version of "Blue Suede Shoes". He's in a hobby band, drummer, which may explain his expertise. The Nipponese attempted to carry him home on their shoulders... Now it's three-thirty a.m., but this city of angels and this old codger won't sleep tonight.
I'm afraid that presently I live a rather surreal life anyway. I met Swenny when he was doing "documentary potshots" in Soi 9, a part of Sukhumvit night life, preferred by wealthy Arabs. Which means you get run over by baby-strollers driven by black burkha-ed ladies, and pushed about by hairy guys in shorts and Reeboks. Strange dress code. All this smack in the middle of the red-light district, what's not a bar stuffed with girls is a massage parlor stuffed with massage girls, or a night club stuffed with, you name it, girls.
Wonderful impressions by Photographer Jack Kurtz are here
Hard-working entrepreneurs, most of them supporting a family (mother, two sisters and two nieces, and the brother who came to visit her two years ago and simply stayed.), and rather innocent in any rational moral system.
Anyway, Swenny was there with a giant Nikon, flashing into the crowds. One of the darn elephants they insist to lead through those overcrowded alleys had inadvertently taken off a high-class Mercedes' rear-view mirror, and he was busily documenting the resulting casualties. The owner, in traditional Arab gear, versus the mahout, a guy from down river, and about twenty of his friends (everybody here is the friend of a guy leading a two-ton animal, especially if the adversary is filthy rich, speaks Arab only, and wears a kind of immaculately white nightgown... plus bloomers). I got my Lumix ready and joined Swenny through the crowds. Later - everything was solved in that special Thai way, i.e., they parted ways after half an hour of shouting, minutes before a police car arrived - later we compared our pictures over a few Mekhongs, and that resulted in a job offer. My view of the incident was a lot more surrealistic, almost slapstick-like, and the Lumix has a very good zoom objective, and needs next to no light. I had concentrated on the Merc owner, and documented his rising horror and despair, while all the shots of the crowd were highly "subjective", dynamic, and almost , but not quite, blurry. Swenny bought them on the spot, and after some more Mekhong in a separee upstairs, we agreed on that shooting of ballerinas for a rather symbolic fee. In fact I'm better in conceptualizing than in the actual footwork. I would have done the job for free...
Did you ever photograph something as positively evil as shoes? I'm not talking boots or flip-flops, I'm talking ballerinas. They must be satan's personal favorite. (My spellchecker insists I should capitalize satan, but for personal reasons I won't) Anyway: the attractive thing about ballerinas is that little toe-cleavage, which produces a certain - almost erotic - tension, otherwise it's just a flat-soled cut off leather sock, suitable for minors. In other words, it's another maidenly Virgin fetish item.
Or so the customer thought. "Think sexy!".
Well, and this in a country where people are practically BORN with flip-flops... and don't wear shoes inside their home. But of course Swenny addresses the chosen few, the SUV-driving well-offs that hang around Golf Courses and can be persuaded to spend 15 days' minimum wage on a pair of Korea-made ballerinas.
Of course I'm NOT the photographer - no working permitted for my kind of retiree visa bearers. So I was introduced to the staff as a kind of fatherly friend of the official photographer when we showed up at state towers, where Swenny had booked the roof restaurant from 5 to 8 o'clock a.m. Morning light loves skin. Night staff let us in, with a posse of black-clad security guys escorting us to the white-and-cream colored terraced restaurant. The foot models (Yes, that's a valid category! And rightly so: you wouldn't believe what kind of abominations some models have below their ankles...) the foot models bared their snow-white, almost transparent-skinned items, the staff started applying all kinds of feet-makeup, while the coolies polished the ballerinas for the ump-tenth time.
We decided to have the security squad as a mysterious half-blurred background for the first set. In the beginning we tried to keep them from attitudinizing. Unlike cats (Oh, how I love snapping cats!), Thai security personnel has that tendency to mutate into a bunch of juveniles at the sight of a camera, posing and making victory-signs. After a while we decided to encourage that behavior, take a few total shots of them, and copy them in digitally. After all, the models complained about the duration of the shootings. Those ballerinas leave pressure marks on the feet, the longer they are worn, the worse. As if being sprayed with a fine mist of iced water wasn't bad enough...
"Nature can't be photographed: you have to f***ing fake it"...
That was when I decided to pull (seniority) rank and retire to a table overlooking the scene to have an absolutely overpriced Triple shot latte macchiato. Seen from afar, with all the caffeine firing up my brain, the ritual of the ballerina shooting - with a foot-bound Leg Model in tutu as a background - above early morning Bangkok had a surreal quality. Which was all I had intended. Didn't like the heli shots, though. Too much of a remake of Hangover II, but of course, it's a production for a local market, adding a flair of international recognition. I even insisted that they place Alan's first hat on a nearby table... And, indeed, a helicopter 50 feet away lets all the glasses (and the hat) on your table rattle and roll... All that feeling of importance and exclusivity for a bunch of photos and an emotional 30 seconds video clip...
But as they say, I laughed all the way to my bank.
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