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12
Mar
10

Inappropriate Joke Friday

By SlickTiger 18 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , , ,

Hey Party People!

I didn’t get a chance to bang out another thoughtful, insightful and well written post last night because the universe didn’t want me to. Instead, the universe told me, explicitly, to go home, lie down on the couch and pass out.

Who am I to argue with such a compelling suggestion?

 

 

So I’m inviting some community participation today! Like when the teacher tells the class that today they’re doing unprepared speeches in order to ‘work on their public speaking skills’ ie. he was too drunk the night before to prepare a lesson.

I hereby declare today ‘Inappropriate Joke Friday’. The only question that you need to ask to see if your joke qualifies as ‘inappropriate’ is: If I told this to a group of complete strangers, would they ever speak to me again?

If the answer is yes, I’m sorry, but your joke isn’t quite inappropriate enough. Buy a Jimmy Carr DVD and try again next time.

So to get the ball rolling, here’s mine (courtesy of Stikey):

A serious alcoholic keeps coming home at 3 in the morning, blind drunk and covered in his own puke. After years of this, his wife finally offers him the following ultimatum:

‘If you come home like that one more time,’ she says, furious, ‘I’m divorcing you.’

That night the man tells his friends what his wife said while they’re sitting in the pub getting tanked.

 

 

‘What the fuck am I going to do?’ the man asks in desperation.

‘Easy,’ says his buddy, ‘put a R100 note in your shirt pocket. When your wife starts bitching you out for being covered in puke again, just tell her that R100’s from the guy at the bar who threw up on you. It’s to cover the dry cleaning costs. Problem solved.’

‘Fuck!’ the man replies, ‘you’re a genius! Who wants tequila? I’m buying!’

Early the following morning, the man staggers home, covered in puke only to be greeted by his wife, who is spitting mad.

‘It’s over!’ she screams, ‘I warned you about this you good-for-nothing drunk asshole!’

‘No, no, no, wait,’ the man slurs, ‘see this hunnered rand note? It’s from the guy who puked on me to get my clothes dry cleaner, um, cleaned!’

‘That’s two hundred rand. What’s the other hundred for?’ The wife asks, still livid.

‘Oh that? That’s from the guy who shat in my pants.’

Da dum.

Tsshh.

Ok, now you!

[Sound Effect: Crickets in the background]

-ST

11
Mar
10

Album Review: Spoon – Transference

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Album Reviews
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Spoon is one of those bands that you’ve definitely heard of before but if you had to name one of their singles or even an album chances are you’d draw a big, fat blank.

This is because even though the band has been playing since 1993, they’ve never managed to break into the mainstream music scene. Sure, some of their songs have featured in TV series such as Scrubs, Veronica Mars and The Simpsons and the movies Stranger Than Fiction and Cloverfield, but if you can name one song that featured in any of those (WITHOUT Wikipediaing ‘Spoon’) you’ll win a prize!*

The first recording of theirs I got my hands on was their 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and though I didn’t think much of it at first, after 5 or 6 listens I had to concede that it was a great album.

 

 

I then delved into their entire catalogue and was pleasantly surprised to find that if there’s one thing that can be said about Spoon, it’s that they write consistently good music, which is what lead to MetaCritic ranking Spoon as the ‘Top overall artist of the decade’ last year, an accolade not to be taken lightly.

After hearing the first single from Transference (‘Written in Reverse’) on the band’s MySpace site earlier this year, I was convinced Transference would be a good album, and it is. Not stupendous, not mind-blowing, but definitely worth sinking your teeth into whether you know Spoon or not.

The beauty of Spoon is that they have this ability to take simple beats and riffs and turn them into songs that are much, much more than the sum of their parts.

Their idiosyncratic brand of upbeat indie rock, which is punctuated with funky basslines and foot-tappingly infectious piano melodies is easily accessible, which is why it’s always baffled me that more people aren’t into this band.

The first track on Transference ‘Before Destruction’ opens sparsely and keeps things that way. The drums are guitar definitely take a back seat to singer Britt Daniels vocals, which turn an otherwise bland song into something with a bit more character.

 

 

‘Is Love Forever?’ comes across as messy at first, the drums and guitar sound like they’re following different time signatures, and Daniel’s vocals sound like an attempt at singing Morse Code.

An interesting choice for a second track, but then again, Spoon always put their strongest tracks in the middle of their albums, so if you’re not feeling anything yet after the meandering third track ‘The Mystery Zone’, hang in there, it gets better.

‘Written in Reverse’ pulls no punches and is a great example of what this band can do when they find a killer riff and drive it home. The piano chords play with the precision of factory machines stamping engine parts while a jangling, Rolling Stonesey guitar riff struts confidently into centre stage like a stripper after 6 tequilas.

‘I Saw The Light’ follows neatly afterward with its soft / loud dynamic that, just as it’s getting tired, swings into piano and drum instrumental that almost sounds like a completely different song and adds an interesting layer to an otherwise mediocre track.

Besides those tracks, ‘Got Nuffin’ will also stand out as another example of Spoon’s simple but-catchy-style of songwriting. Listen to the individual parts of the song and nothing much is happening, but put them together and you’ve got a song that hooks you by the second chorous.

‘Goodnight Laura’ is also notable and should have been the last song on the album, it’s a great track, one which perfectly showcases both Eric Harvey’s talents as a pianist and Daniels’ talents as a vocalist.

However, Transference is not without a few shockers – the beginning of ‘Trouble Comes Running’ sounds like it was recorded on someone’s cell phone and does little to hold your attention throughout the song, but isn’t as bad as the fourth track, ‘Who Makes Your Money’ which repeats the same flakey piano chords and bassline for a full 4 minutes.

‘Out Go The Lights’ and ‘Nobody Gets Me But You’ are both Ok songs, but that’s about it. Neither will jump out at you or make much of an impression until your 6th or 7th listen.

 

 

In terms of the lyrics, Daniels keeps them as simple and dimmed down as possible, which serves as a double-edged sword in that they don’t come across as flowery or overly-pretentious, but at the same time, I can’t honestly tell you one line throughout the album that really stood out for me.

What you’re getting with an album like Transference is a collection of songs that will definitely grow on you in time, but probably won’t change your life in any majorly significant way.

If you liked Spoon’s albums Gimme Fiction (2005) and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga (2007) then you’ll definitely like Transference. Likewise, if you’re unfamiliar with this band, I would highly recommend listening to those two albums first and then giving Transference a spin.

Final Verdict: 6/10

*The prize is self-importance. Well done.

10
Mar
10

SlickTiger Interviews The Minister Of Arts And Culture… Or Does He?

By SlickTiger 2 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Last week’s post about the time I interviewed Vodacom CEO Alan Knott-Craig got a whole bunch of old cogs turning in my head and memories I’d long since forgotten have been playing all jerky and in sepia tones at the weirdest times.

 

 

The one where I ‘interviewed’ the then minister of arts and culture, Dr. Zwelidingo Pallo Jordan, jumped randomly into my head outta nowhere and I burst out laughing in the middle of a teleconference call with Ireland.

I was 22 years old at the time and facing the biggest hair crisis of my young life. During varsity I cut my hair about four times in as many years. I looked like a roadie for Metallica,  which was great, at varsity.

Back in the real world (ie Joburg) people looked at me like I was something that had dribbled out of a garbage bag they had just lifted from the bin.

So I reluctantly agreed, in the interest of securing gainful employment, to get a haircut. But the next question I faced was what kind of haircut? At that stage in my life I’d only had 3 – a ‘pot cut’ from when I was born up until I was about 13, then a middle parting throughout highschool and then shoulder-length, greasy, grunge-rock hair from when I arrived at varsity till when I left.

Stupidly, I told the hairdresser to keep it pretty long and defaulted to the middle parting I’d worn back in highschool.

It was fucking cringe-worthy. Remember Will Ferrell in ‘One Night At The Roxbury’? No? Let me jog your memory.

 

 

Yeah, it was that bad.

So anyway, the group of journalists I was working with at the time managed to set up an interview with the Minister himself, ol’ Zwelidingo, at the ministry in Pretoria and so we set out early one morning to get there by 9 and conduct an ‘interview’ with him (ie. try to sell him advertising in the bullshit report we were compiling).

In order to make what we were doing look legit, there were a number of essential tools we used, such as:

  • Expensive-looking suits (ties and all)
  • Briefcases
  • A thoroughly researched list of interview questions (no shit, if we didn’t at least get this part right, no one would take us seriously enough to buy advertising)
  • A ridiculously overpriced ratecard and legal documents that were anything but
  • A dictaphone that used tiny old-school tapes, and
  • A digital camera that took fucking crap pictures

About halfway to Pretoria, my colleague, a Hawaiian guy in his thirties called Steve asked me if I’d brought spare batteries for the camera at which point I froze rigid.

‘What?’ he said, ‘Don’t tell me you forgot spare batteries.’

‘I didn’t forget spare batteries,’ I said, still rigid.

‘Then what?’

‘I forgot the camera.’

‘Oh, what the fuck dude?! What the fuck are we supposed to do? We can’t go back now, we’re nearly there, the interview’s in 20 minutes!’

‘Fuck, just relax, that thing takes fucking useless pictures anyway, we’re not going to use one fucking picture we’ve taken so far, they’re all shit.’

‘Yeah, but that’s not the fucking point! The fucking point is to look like we’re journalists and journalists take fucking pictures! God! How could you forget the fucking camera!’

‘Stop being such a prick about it I’m sorry! What else do you want me to say! I’m sorry! Fuck! At least I remembered…’

‘What? What is it?’

‘Oh fuck.’

‘Don’t say that. Don’t say ‘oh fuck’ like that.’

‘Dude. I forgot the dictaphone.’

‘Oh fuck.’

 

 

We were royally screwed. We had no choice but to keep our eyes peeled for an electronics store on the way to the interview and though we found two, neither of them had dictaphones.

This left us with only one option, call the Minister’s PA, explain that our dictaphone was broken and find out of the ministry didn’t have one we could borrow.

She said she’d see what she could do. I still remember sitting in the ministry foyer, nervous as hell, jiggling my leg, drumming my fingers, praying for a miracle.

While we were sitting there waiting a man with a giant ghetto blaster walked past us and into the PA’s office.

I looked at Steve. Steve looked at me. His leg started jiggling.

‘Are you sure this will work?’ we asked the PA moments later.

‘It should – it has a record button and we found a clean tape you can record on, just make sure you sit close to it.’

And that’s how, on a random Tuesday morning, I ended up walking into the Minister of Arts and Culture’s office dressed in a 3-piece with a fucking terrible haircut and a ghetto blaster.

‘Ehhhh,’ the Minister said, frowning, not entirely sure what the fuck was going on, ‘are you going to play me a song?’

Believe it or not, it gets worse.

The ghetto blaster had the shortest cable known to man and no batteries, so in order for us to all be close enough to it so that we could actually record what was being said, we had to rearrange the fucking furniture in the minister’s office so that we could all sit at the boardroom table, around the gheto blaster.

Thank fuck Steve was with me, he kept the Minister occupied with polite banter while I made sure the tape was rewound, hit record/play and started saying ‘testing, testing’ in a voice loaded with the kind of quiet desperation people usually reserve for prayer.

 

 

I hit stop. The loud sound of the spring-loaded buttons snapping up made the room so silent. I hit rewind. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the gheto blaster. It got to the end of the tape and I hit stop again.

I shut my eyes. With a trembling finger I pressed play. The tape spools started turning and the next thing I new, clear as day we all heard…

Nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

The record/play buttons on the blaster were for recording CDs, or maybe even, if you were feeling daring, the radio, but that was it.

‘Um,’ Steve said as he realised how fucked we were, ‘Minister. I’m so sorry about this, but I think we’re going to have to reschedule…’

‘What magazine did you say you were from again?’ The Minister asked, too baffled at this point to be angry.

‘British Airways. HighLife Magazine,’ I replied, blushing blood-red.

‘Well that settles it then.’

‘Settles what?’ Steve asked nervously.

‘I want free flights. British Airways.’

I looked at Steve. Steve looked at me. I gave up. So did Steve.

‘Free flights,’ I said, ‘you got it.’

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how NOT to interview the minister of arts and culture, and yes, there will be a quiz later 😉

Have a killer day.

-ST

09
Mar
10

The Day I Won The Lottery

By SlickTiger 5 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , ,

I stood in the sea, holding her. We watched the sun set pink-red over the horizon while surfers around us paddled lazily after waves and a man on the beach threw a frisbee for his Jack Russell.

We left when the sun was about a fist from the horizon and drove back to our crazy wooden house, both of us salty from the sea with sandy toes, and we talked about the future.

 

 

Back at home I fried up some burgers while she did a load of washing and when we were both done, I popped a bottle of Champaign and we drank a toast, clinking glasses. Our wild eyes met, my lioness and I, and we kissed. The taste of cold Champaign, the feeling of her body pressed against mine.

That old Sheryl Crow song came on her iPod, ‘My Favourite Mistake’ and I remembered the first time she ever said those words to me.

The things women tell us when they’re falling in love, we never forget them do we? No matter what happens, no matter how badly it ends, we never forget the words women whisper to us in those moments when the universe is holding its breath and it feels like the credits in the movie of your life could roll at any second.

And now she lies sleeping on the couch next to me while I finish the rest of the bottle of Champaign, listening to Jimi Hendrix on this balmy summer evening, at the end of a day that I think has changed my life completely.

There are things happening, things I could never have foreseen and they’re good things because they prove what I always suspected was true, that the good guys win sometimes and that if you find something you’re passionate about and stick to it, great things will come your way.

Me, I’m a writer, always have been, but I can’t tell you how long I wasted that gift, how many years I kept it locked away waiting for an opportunity that never came, making excuses.

Not living, just killing time.

But the day I finally got my shit together and started this blog, something came alive, and this thing, it’s big and it’s getting bigger.

Maybe, like me, people are tired of being fed a load of contrived bullshit. Maybe they just want to kick back for a few minutes a day and feel like they’re connecting with an actual human being instead of a bunch of fucking robots.

 

 

I stand like I always have, naked in front of you, shameless and unafraid, and I tell it exactly the way I see it and I leave the rest entirely up to you.

But I will say this though, pull up a chair if you like what you see here, because the show’s just starting and you bet your ass, it’s gonna be a good one 😉

-ST

08
Mar
10

Top Four Reasons Why Drinking An Entire Bottle Of Whisky Before Work Is A Good Idea

By SlickTiger 4 Comments
Categories: Killer Posts and Tiger Guides
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

It’s Monday morning and I know what you’re thinking.

“Fuck” is probably it, followed shortly by, “this again.”

Well, I have good news. Thanks to a miracle remedy I recently discovered, your work days no longer have to smack of mindless repetition, bullshit meetings and faking that you enjoy the company a bunch of people you wouldn’t piss on if they were on fire.

That miracle remedy, ladies and gentlemen, is whisky. Don’t believe me? Well then, read my top four reasons why drinking an entire bottle of whisky before work is a good idea.*

Ready? Atta boy! Let’s get started!

*Note: For best results, an ENTIRE bottle must be consumed. Don’t be a pussy and stop when you’re two thirds down because you’ve gone blind, what are you? Six? MAN UP fer chrissake!

Reason #1: The drive to work will be AMAZING!

The first thing you’ll notice once you’ve chugged down the last few delicious mouthfulls of whisky is that you are more confident and capable than you’ve ever been IN YOUR LIFE!

The second thing you’ll notice is that your pants (and underpants) might need changing before you venture out into the world due to a large, warm, wet stain around your crotchal area.

Don’t let this deter you, the complete loss of bodily functions is a common side effect after drinking an entire bottle of whisky. Just make sure you sit down first before attempting to change your pants as balancing on one leg at this juncture could prove tricky.

 

 

Armed with fresh pants (and underpants) stride confidently out the house and into your car and leave for work. If you’re having trouble starting your car, run through the following checklist of questions to make sure you haven’t forgotten something:

  • Have you left the house?
  • With your car keys?
  • Are you sure it is indeed your car that you are trying to start?
  • Is your car in gear?
  • Do you remember how gears work?
  • Have you taken the handbrake off?
  • Have you reversed down the driveway, across the street and into the neighbour’s living room? If so, explain the situation away by saying you’re recovering from extensive neural surgery, and then pretend to slip into a coma

Once this checklist has been completed, you will notice that the drive to work is AMAZING!

You’ll careen at breakneck speeds along pavements, the wrong way down highways and possibly even along railway tracks. All that traffic that used to cause you unnecessary stress will magically disappear as you tail-end, side-swipe and pile-drive your way through any vehicles unfortunate enough to get in your way.

 

 

Provided you aren’t arrested and your car doesn’t explode in a blazing ball of molten steel and broken glass, you’ll arrive at work in record time, invigorated after your near brush with death and only vaguely concerned about the newspaper vendors smeared all over the front of your car.

 

Reason #2: You can finally get all of your issues with fellow work colleagues off your chest

Any HR person will tell you that the best way to maintain a happy and healthy work environment is to keep lines of communication open at all times.

In practice this becomes difficult to do as people don’t always take kindly to you telling them that they are big fat pathetic losers who are further down the food chain than prawn shit.

This can lead to the suppression of any number of issues that you have with fellow co-workers, which can have negative results on your performance in a team-orientated office environment.

However, after an entire bottle of whisky, voicing your concerns becomes not only easy to do, but also thoroughly enjoyable.

 

 

I’d suggest starting with junior staff members in order to practice your new found skill and then moving up the food chain and finally ending with your boss or even the CEO of the company.

Here’s another check-list of constructive comments and feedback you could give to your colleagues and co-workers in order to facilitate an open and honest forum for future discussions:

  • Your ugly! Anyone ev’r tell ya that? UGLY AND YOU SMELL! Go home! N’body likes YOU!
  • Look-ee look-ee! If it isn’t Miss ‘I jus’ got ANOTHER pr’motion! Everyone knows you’re screwin’ the boss, yeah! That’s right! EVERYONE!
  • Hey there sweetcheeks! Did I ev’r tell you you’r fuckin’ HOT? HUH? DID I? Well, you are. C’mere, gimme a hug, c’mere. I love you. I LOVE you! Hey, c’m back here!
  • Yo Boss-man! Up high! Hahaha! C’mon, loosen up ya big, dumb prick, stop bein’ such a fuckin’ homo all the time!

You’ll find all these and many, many more conversational ice-breakers come naturally after an entire bottle of whisky, so why not lighten up the atmosphere in your company and drink an entire bottle of whisky before going to work today!

 

Reason #3: You’ll get to go home early

After your courageous display of honesty at the work place, you can be sure that your bosses will reward you by letting you take the rest of the day off.

You can spend this time reflecting on the profound difference you have made in the lives of the people you work with, or, even better, getting started on a second bottle of whisky!

 

Which brings me neatly to my final reason why drinking an entire bottle of whisky before going to work is a good idea.

 

Reason #4: I’ll have someone to drink with

Having experienced first hand all of the reasons why drinking an entire bottle of whisky before work is a good idea, I now find myself waking up completely carefree everyday at noon without having to stress about the burden of going to work and with not a worry on my mind except my impending court date.

Which is why I urge you to try this miracle cure for all of life’s woes and when you have, come and find me!

I can be reached during the day at the Salvation Army shelter in the city centre and at the alley behind it at night where I often pull up a plastic crate with my new friends and drink varying kinds of interesting alcoholic concoctions they make from metholated spirits and shoe polish!

 

 

So don’t delay! Drink an entire bottle of whisky before work NOW and kiss your worries (and life) goodbye!

-ST

07
Mar
10

Sunday Grocery Shopping = Hatred

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Things were going well, I had a handle on today, I felt like progress was being made.

I was up by 9.30 finishing the final few things that needed picking up, packing away, pulling out and plugging in. I ate leftover spaghetti bolognaise for breakfast, when you eat meat for breakfast the world bows down to you because it knows that you cannot fuck with this man!

You cannot fuck with a man who eats meat for breakfast – that man proceeds directly to the shower and scrubs himself so clean he gets out red, the colour of beetroot, and races to the sink and brushes his teeth, LIKE A SPARTAN!

 

 

This man was ME!

Right after that, I grabbed the nearest pen and began writing a LIST! Of GROCERIES! Because we were running dangerously low on MEAT!

Once I’d made sure my grocery list had at least four DIFFERENT animals on it, I added other crucial foodstuffs that I knew I’d get in trouble if I didn’t remember such as:

  • MILK!
  • YOGHURT!
  • COFFEE!
  • A MOSQUITO NET! (Technically not a food stuff, but not too bad on a piece of toast with some peanut butter)

I surveyed my grocery list, realising full well that it was lacking in a number of additional foodstuffs to make the consumption of the MEAT more palatable for my WOMAN and other leafy, vegetable-like foodstuffs that my doctor told me I need to have in my diet to KEEP THE SCURVY AWAY, but these were MINOR DETAILS that I knew I could figure out WHEN I GOT THERE!

And so I struck out, engine roaring, music blaring, to HUNT and GATHER from the hot, dry and dusty savannah plains of Pick ‘N Pay, confident that WITHIN THE HOUR I’d be back with a wagon-load of food to nourish my tribe.

 

 

I arrived and contemplated parking in the yellow bays right by the entrance that are reserved specifically FOR THE ELDERLY! But that’s highly inconsiderate and what would my mom say?

I then GRABBED a trolley and stormed into the grocery store, one I had never been to before, only to find that it was FUCKING MASSIVE!

Crap. I thought. How the fuck am I going to find anything in here?

The second thing I noticed was the music, which was quite CALM and PEACEFUL and had the same effect SLEEPING PILLS have on me.

Before long, I started to lose enthusiasm. Before long I was just kinda flopping from one aisle to the next, thinking ‘Hmm, Royco Cuppa Soup… do we need this? Royco? Cuppa Soup? I… don’t fucking know…’

The music rolled like a thick fog into my brain, which, already completely overwhelmed for choice, was systematically starting to shut itself down.

Eventually the workings of my mind resembled a goldfish, dead, floating belly up in it’s tank. Or a donkey, standing in the boiling midday heat, its face completely expressionless, half-heartedly swishing flies away from its ass.

 

 

Fakh, I thought, not for the first time in my life, I hate grocery shopping.

I don’t know what I bought, hell, I don’t even remember the last half-hour of my grocery shop, which explains why I came home with the following items:

  • Coat hangers
  • Mince Mate (but no mince)
  • Ice Cream
  • A gem squash
  • Soap
  • Steak
  • Oven Gloves, and
  • Royco Cuppa Soup

Kill me.

Kill me now 🙁

-ST

06
Mar
10

Saturday Post

By SlickTiger Leave a Comment
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: , , , ,

Man-o-man, I haven’t popped out a Saturday post for months! I dig writing them though because there’s none of the usual bullshit pressure to get them out as fast as humanly possible.

That’s one thing you learn very quickly about blogging – you do it on borrowed time. ‘Especially if you have a job and a girlfriend and drive and a life’ J-Rab has just chirped in. She does that from time to time, but rest assured, I punish her for such disruptive behavior.

Warm up the wagon wheel, yeee-ha!

 

 

Aaaaaaaanyway. Yeah, like I was saying, unless you get paid shitloads of money for it, you literally have to steal time from other things you should be doing in order to blog. I often wonder what this blog would be like if I got paid a crapload to just write it and didn’t have to hammer posts out through the night or at sparrow’s fart in the morning.

Chances are, ironically, it would probably be much worse than it is right now because when you’re racing against time to finish posts they have this funny way of turning out amazing. I do some of my best work under pressure, that’s a fact.

Today was a good day, that’s why I’m writing this. In fact, the whole weekend so far has been awesome.

On Friday after work, J-Rab and I hit the beach in Camp’s Bay and the weather couldn’t have been more beautiful if God himself had CGIed the sky.

 

 

We wet our feet in the sea, we took goofy pictures of ourselves, we looked up at the mountains. Something inside unwound a little.

Afterward we sat at Caprice and drank one cocktail after the next, people watching all the while and watching the sun set slowly over the edge of the ocean. It’s a crazy place Caprice, a lot of beautiful people go there looking sexy and talk to other sexy people and pretend like they’re the only people in the place.

I was keen to meet up with a buddy of mine, Jacques SS, after Caprice. He was going to the opening of Trench Town in Obs, but J-Rab an I were getting too drunk to drive all the way back to where we live, which is basically between Stellenbosch and Somerset West, so we just drove back home, shagged one another’s brains out and slept like the dead.

 

 

The entire day today was spent straightening out the little house where we live and fahk! I’m happy to say everything’s finally done.

It’s weird, I didn’t like this fucked up little wooden house of ours at first, but now that it’s full of all our stuff I’ve warmed to it a lot.

And with that I’m going to bid you all a good night. J-Rab and I are itching to sink our teeth into the third season of Dexter and the longer I write this, the less time we’ll have to do that.

Too-de-loo muthufukkahs!

-ST

05
Mar
10

When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be Alan Knott-Craig

By SlickTiger 3 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

A long time ago, I was a journalist working with a team of people from all over the world and I felt pretty fucking special and amazing.

We got paid every week in cash, huge wads of R200 notes carefully counted, stacked and packed into brown paper bags.

See, what we were doing wasn’t exactly legal. It would bore the hell out of me to have to explain it as I’ve probably told this story a hundred times, so instead I want you to think of the scene in Fight Club where they’re in the boutique store selling soap.

 

 

The narrator says something about how all they’re doing is selling rich people their fat asses back to them – we were doing the same thing, only in an editorial sense with neat, official rate cards with prices printed in Euros.

You want a page of advertising in our report? That’ll be eighty-fucking-nine thousand Euros please.

I know what it feels like to be escorted out of someone’s office by security. I also know what it feels like to lie to mayors, ministers and high-powered CEOs right to their smug little faces instead of the other way around.

You’d be surprised how easy it is – 70% of winning people over is looking the part, get that right and with enough important-sounding smarmy banter you can bullshit your way into anything.

That’s how I landed the interview with Alan Knott-Craig, who was the then CEO of Vodacom. A phone call here, an official-looking series of faxes and emails there and then next thing I knew, I was waltzing into his offices with my Hawaiian team-mate Steven, both of us dressed to the nines in expensive business suits and leather shoes polished until they looked like black mirrors.

I wore a fucking tie. I had a fucking briefcase. I was 22 years old.

For the record, old Alan had the hottest PA I’ve ever seen in my life. That woman was hot enough to melt tar, fahk. It’s a smart move because before you’ve even met the man you already have this grudging respect for him whether you’re conscious of it or not.

 

 

Understandably, I was more than a little nervous and had asked Steven, 12 years my senior, which interview question of the ones I’d drafted I should start with.

‘None of them,’ he replied.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Dude, you look like a kid fresh outta college.’

‘I am a kid fresh outta college.’

‘Yeah, so you’ve got to earn the man’s respect or he’s never going to take you seriously. Start with a difficult question, show him you’re not afraid of him.’

‘O… kay…’

‘Ask him why Vodacom’s cell phone rates in South Africa are so much more expensive than other places in the world.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t think that’s going to piss him off?’

‘Trust me, after that he’ll know we aren’t fucking around and after that, he’ll buy some advertising in the report.’

‘Cool. Ok, I’ll do it.’

He’s a tall guy, ol’ Alan. Big hands. Exudes unwavering confidence and is direct to the point of almost coming across as rude.

 

 

None of this helped my nerves. We all sat down and I opened my briefcase with trembling hands as he sat there, calm as a cat with its claw through a mouse’s tail.

‘So Mr Knott-Craig,’ I stammered once I was set up and ready to go.

‘Call me Alan,’ he replied.

‘Alan. Why are Vodacom’s rates so much more expensive than other places in the world?’

And good old Alan, good old Mr Knott-Craig, I’ll never forget his response as long as I live. Me, a skinny kid out of college no idea what the hell I was doing, and him, one of the most influential men in South Africa, the chief executive officer of an empire.

He stared straight at me with a look that could weld steel and said one word.

‘Crap.’

Which is exactly what I did.

And that’s why when I grow up I want to be Alan Knott-Craig, what a fucking badass.

-ST

04
Mar
10

SlickTiger Meets Gary The Cannibal

By SlickTiger 6 Comments
Categories: Being Slick and Killer Posts
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“I’m in a gay relationship,” he said, “I’m not sure if you… might have… heard anything about that…?”

When complete strangers open up like that with me, my first instinct is to go deadpan. I fake nonchalance because I’m totally cool with that. This is 2010 for chrissake, people are entitled to live free and without prejudice when it comes to their lifestyle choices.

 

 

And no, it doesn’t alarm me on some level that I’m sharing a room with this man, didn’t he just say he’s in a relationship?

“No, I hadn’t,” I replied, “but, um, I respect that.”

“We’ve been together 8 years now.”

“That’s a long time,” I said, genuinely impressed, “the longest relationship I’ve managed so far is about and year and a half. Straight relationship. The longest straight relationship. Um. Not that I’ve tried any other kind, haha… yeah, so…”

“Should we head downstairs?”

“Fine with me.”

And that’s pretty much how our first conversation went. They got much better after that, as they do once alcohol is introduced, and by the time we all met up for dinner that night, Gary and I were good friends.

Also, because we were two out of the only three males on the conference with about 26 women, we ended up hanging out a lot purely by default.

Shortly after we all sat down for dinner the MD of the company told me that they weren’t going to make us n00bs dance or sing a song for everyone, but that we would have to stand up, introduce ourselves and make a speech during dinner instead.

I love shit like that and so the second the MD, henceforth known as ‘Hot-Boss’, made the announcement to the table, I volunteered to go first, right then and there, before dinner had even been served.

Always go first. Don’t be a pussy. People will respect your courage and, having no one else to compare you with, will love everything you say.

I kept my speech nice and short. I thanked them for hiring me, I thanked them for inviting me on the conference, told them how excited I was to be starting out at such a friendly and rad company and sat back down.

“Wait a minute,” one of the girls chirped, “tell us why you got arrested!”

Ahh Christ.

 

 

In one of the ‘getting to know you’ games earlier that day it had emerged that I had been arrested when I was 13. Funny how things like that seem to pop up at the least appropriate moments.

Eyebrows were raised. Hot-Boss tried to brush it off by saying, ‘Well, there’s a question we’re definitely going to add to the list the next time we interview someone.” Queue polite / nervous laughter (keep in mind this was before the alcohol started flowing).

Under the surface though I could see she was a little unsettled – the last thing you want to find out about the person you’ve just hired in that they’ve had a run-in with the fuzz.

You can read all about the first time I got arrested here, it’s actually a pretty tame story. Me and some buddies smashed a few windows on a derelict building and got caught and arrested for vandalism.

Still though, it sounded bad when I explained the story over dinner that night, it was awkward and I sat down sheepishly when I was done and made a mental note to just shut the fuck up about that stuff in future.

Shortly thereafter Jager-bombs began to drop like grenades down a VC trench.

The next n00b stood up after dinner was served and got a slightly more severe grilling than me, she clocked in at about 4 minutes. She survived with her dignity intact though, but only just.

More Jager-bombs dropped. Speeches got longer and longer as the people listening grilled the n00bs with one question after the next. Questions like ‘How old were you the first time you got drunk?’, ‘When did you first have sex?’ and ‘Who’s the hottest girl here?’ started popping up. Much hilarity ensued.

Jager, Jager, Jager. Bomb, bomb, bomb.

Eventually everyone got tired of speeches and hit the upstairs lounge to party on down and cut up the dance floor.

Sometime during the festivities someone figured out that Gary hadn’t made his n00b speech at which point we all started chanting ‘Ga-ry! Ga-ry! Ga-ry!” which reminded me of the crowd chanting ‘Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!” from the movie with the same name about a retarded football player.

 

 

Being surprisingly shy in front of a crowd, Gary tried to get us to simmer down in the hope that we’d all forget about it after awhile and carry on partying.

No such luck.

Hot-Boss asked him to tell us about himself and he told us a killer story about how when he served in the army (navy?) he was sent on a ship to guard PW Botha only to end up accompanying ol’ Pik on what can only be described as a ‘ho-run’.

Pik was in the mood for some Eastern European women, of which there happened to be a few on a neighbouring ship, so they rowed off in a life-raft towards this other ship only to get shot down completely by the women / security on the ship and forced to row back empty handed.

“Hahaha!” people chuckled, “nice story Gary!” “Tell us another story Gary!” “Yeah, tell us another one!” everyone shouted in happy, drunk unison.

“Well,” said Gary, “another thing I’ve learned is that human flesh is overrated.”

[Insert record scratching sound effect]

“What?! Overrated how?” one of the braver girls present asked.

“As a food source,” Gary stated, matter-of-factly.

The room exploded. “What the fuck?!” “You’ve eaten human flesh?!” “Tell us you’re joking Gary!” everyone shouted in bewildered, drunk unison.

“It was in North Africa back in the day when a lot of people still did that and it wasn’t really frowned upon. I had no idea what I was eating, I was only told afterwards,” he said defensively, “it tasted quite sweet.”

Cut to the inside of my head where the opening scene from the movie Ravenous started playing, the one where a tent full of starving soldiers all tuck into a bloody meal of suspicious-looking circular steaks.

 

 

It’s shot mostly in close-ups. They tear at the meat with their teeth, blood running down their chins and congealing in their beards, while the wet sound of them all chewing gets louder and louder and the cuts get faster and faster and faster and…

“GARY THE CANNIBAL!” I screamed like a man waking up from a nightmare. Everyone burst out laughing, well, everyone but the intern who was struggling to lift her jaw back off the floor.

Me, on the other hand, I was ecstatic. Gary’s priceless over share nullified my earlier confession completely – who the fuck cares about a few broken windows when you have a human flesh eater in your midst?

Now there’s a question to add to the interview list – True or False: Human flesh tastes sweet?

Hahahahahaha! Ahh, good times I tell ya, good times 😉

-ST

03
Mar
10

The Tiger Returns

By SlickTiger 4 Comments
Categories: Being Slick
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

I’ll tell you one thing about Christians, they’ve got the monopoly on guilt. Hell, I don’t even go to church or practise Christianity, but when I do bad shit, the guilt comes thick and fast.

I’ve been meaning to post for a long fucking time, I was in a good routine y’know? People they used to say, ‘Yeah, that SlickTiger guy, funny fucker. Posts every day, EVERY DAY. We love him. We want him in and around our mouths.’

 

 

Now they say, ‘Yeah, that SlickTiger guy, what a jerk. He had something going there for awhile, but it’s clear he ain’t got the stones to see it through. He’s dead to us now.”

Well, I got news Party People, like a cockroach scuttling out the drain after the last nuke wipes humanity out for good, I’m back, and I’m badder than ever 😉

Since I last checked in, crazy shit has gone down. I packed my life up in record time, jumped in The Red Baron and blazed a trail of fire clear across this beautiful, fucked up country of ours.

Joburg showed me its true face just as I left. I saw it the last time the sun set, just as I was about to get on the N1 to Bloem. Its true face looks like this:

 

 

I rolled into Bloem late, my schedule was tight as a drum because my new company had organised a 3 day conference that they really wanted me to attend which started ON the day I was originally going to arrive in CT.

Bloemfontein is a ghost town at 9 on a Monday night. I could count the other cars I saw on one hand. A stray dog nosed through some garbage. An empty chip packet blew scraping down the road.

The next day I got up at 4.30, showered and left by 5. There was about an hour’s grace before the heavens opened like a floodgate and I drove the next 6 hours in rain that fell so heavy it was coming down in sheets.

Try overtaking trucks in weather like that. Visibility is zero, but it’s ok because you can see the other car’s headlights right?

Fuck no. I counted about 15 trucks and cars that were driving with their headlights off, and in every one of those cars I saw my own death, splattered at 120 km/h all over the asphalt.

 

 

I’d be worm food if it weren’t for porn. It saved my life – click this sentence to find out how.

I hit Stellenbosch at around 4.30 and headed straight to Cheetah Outreach where I found her feeding four cheetahs. She had one by the scruff of his neck, a huge handful of fur between her fingers.

‘Hey!’ I said, ‘Stop hurting the animals.’

She turned around to give me a piece of her mind, but stopped mid sentence when she saw it was me.

Two and a half weeks – I could see the difference in her. She’s more tanned, she looks relaxed, more at home here than she was back in the Big Smoke, stuck behind a reception desk, whiling her time away filling in vet boards and staring at nothing.

 

 

She hugged me and the feeling of her all soft and skinny against me was good the way a cold drink on a hot day is good, the way a deep sleep after a hard day is good, good right down to your bones.

13 hours later I’m sitting in a bus with my new co-workers, singing ‘The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round’ into a microphone plugged into the dashboard.

6 hours after that I’m line dancing to ‘Sexy Back’ and smashing Jager-bombs into my face with what I can only describe as hordes of women.

In life sometimes, you just go with it. If you’re me, you take that a step further.

I could go on about the conference, a lot went down over the three days, but I think the word I’m looking for to sum it all up here is ‘radass’. I invented that word, you can use it but you have to reference this blog 😉

The weekend was amazing. J-Rab and I hit Bikini Beach near Gordon’s Bay and on Sunday went to meet my buddy Scatter’s 4 week old daughter.

It’s amazing how perfect babies come out. They’re finished so neatly, ten fingers, ten toes (hopefully) tiny mouth, fat arms and legs. Then they grow up and get all funny-looking and full of imperfections, flaws and fuck-ups.

And now I’m in the thick of things. The new job has started guns blazin’ but you know me, it’s nothing I can’t handle 😉 Oh, before I forget, here’s a pic of me on the first night I arrived at my new place:

 

 

Tune in tomorrow for a post I like to call ‘SlickTiger Meets Gary The Cannibal’.

Ka-Pow!

-ST

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