On a losing streak

On a losing streak
- Tay Yek Keak, Sunday Times Lifestyle, 04 Mar 2007

"I don't know if you noticed but lately losing has been in the air.

I, for instance, have lost money - together with a lot of people I don't know - due to the stock-market crash which originated, like the Great Wall, in China. Man, times have changed. It used to be that cheap toys, fake Prada and other Made-In-China tings hit us from China but now when the stock mart there sneezes, the bourse flu goes around the world liek an epidemic and we all have our noses stuffed.

Actually, it's not my nose I'm worried about. It's my a**. Because it's on the line whenever I lose money. My Mum keeps nagging me about getting the toilet fixed and seh doesn't buy it when I tell her "It's China's fault."

If this continues, pretty soon, I'll be feeling as pi**ed as Eddie Murphy. Eddie, I think, is still very, very angry and thrashing his home right now because he just lost the Oscar. I don't know if you know, but Eddie was a 199.99% sure bet for the supporting actor part he played in Dreamgirls. Unfortunately, they gave it to an old guy named Alan Arkin for playing a foul-mouthed old guy in Little Miss Sunshine. In that movie, the old guy teaches his very young granddaughter to dance like a sleazy stripper in a beauty pageant contest for dolled-up juveniles, another sure sign that the world has change because while all this was going on, Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) also took his clothes off in a play in London and Anna Nicole Smith was lying, I don't know if she had clothes on, in a fridge somewhere waiting to be buried.

By the way, Daniel's play Equus has something to do with horses and it's the kind of stallion thing that's bound to make even his hot HP co-star, Hermione, hormonal. All I know is that when the next one, Harry Potter and the Ardour of the Phoenix or whatever it's called, I might be tempted into thinking, "I wonder if they have shower rooms at Hogwarts?" Coincidentally, Daniel wasn't the only Potter personnel who dropped his trousers. Ralph Fiennes, who plays the evil Lord Voldemort, aka He Who Must Not Be Named, became He Who Must Be Tamed whe he joine the Mile High Club by having sex with an air stewardess in the toilet of an airplane. Anyway, let's leave Harry and Lord Voldemort, the Pants Losers, to come back to Eddie the Oscar Loser.

I read that Eddie was so devastated at being made an a** of a third time after voicing the funny ass in Shrek I and II that he stormed out of the ceremony and didn't return. You know what this means? Since his loss took place very early in the show, that's two very lucky seat-fillers who got to see the entire event from, I think, the second row. Row One was reserved, of course, for the Best Actors and Actresses, the metal detector man and Jack Nicholson. Jack, this year, personified another kind of loss when he turned up completely botak and did his best Britney Spears impersonation.

Now, I was thinking apart from Peter O'Toole, you couldn't get a bigger loser the entire night than Dreamgirls. Peter, who played Lawrenceof Arabia way back in 1962 before desserts became fashionable, has lost a record eight times, thus making him the John Kerry and Newcastle United of the Oscars. Kerry will never win even if he's the only one contesting and Newcastle United is the only team that'll finish fourth in a two-horse race.

Anywya, I know Jennifer Hudson nabbed one for the Dreamgirls but it was still the biggest loser becasue it had not one, but the three songs nominated out of five for Best Song, and was beaten by environmentally fervent female singer, Melissa Etheridge, who kissed her wife when she won. Man, that's another shocking sign of the times. That environmentally fervent people even kiss in view of the pollutants in the air.

I learnt a lesson from those Dreamgirls songs. If you're putting up three, at least make sure that they don't sound like one single damn boring song. If you've got three loud ones, try to make one an erhu instrumental and another, maybe, in Japanese. Call Clint Eastwood. He can help.

I learnt such lessons in losing from Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger. Arsene's Arsenal have just got their a**es kicked out of the League Cup final and the FA cup competition in England. "When you lose, there is always a lesson," Arsene said wisely. He is facing charges due to his side fighting with Chelsea in the Cup final as if it's an ice-hockey match.

I'm very, very grateful to Arsene for teaching me how to lose. But I think he may have carried the lesson a little too far."

Haha... He seems to think a bit like me. He makes fun of exactly the same things I would like to make fun of but don't have the ability to pull off. Anyway, another week on the planet we call Earth.