Brilliant of Victoria University to sneakily serve that injunction before Salient returned from the ASPA awards. Not so brilliant of them to forget the point of ASPA is to enable simultaneous publication of student media news stories.
Victoria University: you got served.
Hint to Salient: During my lengthy on-again off-again relationship with Craccum magazine last century, abducted print-runs have variously turned up: in the crater of Mt Eden; scorched and sodden in a huge campus dumpster; and/or wedged between the buttocks of a litigious student executive election/VSM referendum.
Salient's current exposure has got to be the first time a student magazine wasn't even trying to make the national news. Who can remember all the student media scandals of yore? Um... let's see... the 'Dope Supermarket' in my first year, plus attendant death-threats ... How to shoplift/kill yourself/build a bomb/surf the net and publish what you find... Hmm, was there a repeat of 'how to kill yourself'? So at the ASPA awards on Saturday, when I called out "Dope Supermarket!" to Critic editor Holly Walker, who was touching ever so briefly on student media scandal and warning the audience to watch their drinks, her response was pretty much - "huh?" No-one at the ASPAs remembered that 'scandal' first-hand except for Martyn Bradbury, Tim Watkin and Tim Selwyn. We're all still here in various media incarnations, but the story itself? Meh.
Well, it was TEN YEARS AGO. When Martyn Bradbury still wore a bowler hat, had no tattoos or piercings, didn't know how to roll, and called himself a 'poet'. It would be a few years before Ben Thomas would turn up as one of my first-year Craccum news volunteers. He had a mohawk. And even after that, more than a year before before I stopped using a fake AIESEC card that said I was a 26-year old Malaysian international student to get into bars. It was a time before Public Address. BEFORE THE INTERNET. Google 'Dope Supermarket', and tellingly enough, this is the only thing that comes up.
Fucking hell, am I old or am I old?
Well, not as old as Russell Brown.
The ASPA awards were a lovely opportunity to catch up with my past generation of student media-hacks. It made me feel young again. Because they are all old now. And I am still younger than all of them. Starting university when you're sixteen is hard at the beginning, but boy does it pay off.
However, I was still older than everyone from this year's Salient, Critic and Craccum, with whom I crawled to a Korean Karaoke bar on Wyndham St. Maybe I was the only judge young enough to be allowed to 'hang with the kids.' Maybe I was the only one who knew the way to The Sixth Sense (which makes me not a 'token' Asian, but an Asian with specific cultural use-value). Maybe my blograde needed moral support after not coming top of the class (our people are not used to this sort of thing). Or maybe I just really really like Karaoke. It was not a
'seedy' establishment as some would have you believe, although it was above one of my favourite Canto-noodle bars 'Taller Park' (同乐园) which I like to call 'Trailer Park'.
Good ol' student media. Why, they're nearly as exciting to the mainstream media as bloggers these days.
But they work a lot harder.
****
I am still on blog-holiday by the way, but here are some links and stuff - that's all you come here for anyway, right?
Via angryasianman: Eva from America's Next Top Model (Executive Producer Ken Mok; no known relation) makes a racist crack during an improv-show celebrity MC-battle, and in the words of Steve Chow, gets OWNED by desi-girl Rasika. That's some big-ass ricetrack.
And from the same site, a cartoon, on the same big South-Asian Ass theme.
My two freedom-blogging cyberbuddies are in trouble as usual:
Amnesty International has launched an appeal for Martyn See, maker of Singapore Rebel, the documentary about Opposition Leader Chee Soon Juan which came here with the Human Rights Film Festival earlier this year. Martyn is still under police investigation, and it's not looking good. His thoughts on the Amnesty appeal here.
Why the latest uber-draconian Mainland Chinese crackdown on internet freedoms means that Glutter's own country is now a no-go zone for her.
How she and Reporters sans Frontieres will help me not be deported from China the next time I live there.
Glutter's Democracy Hardcore t-shirts: Support the Hong Kong Democracy Movement by ordering one, there are enough of you Hongkies out there.
From the 'Rockson goes to America' series, Rockson goes to San Francisco, the Asian Pride hub of America and finds the Chinese food to be all pian ang moh one.
The Other Mr Brown is tiring of the 'climate of fear: "Just once, for a change, I'd like to see news reports that state, "This incident contributed to a climate of a-little-bit-scared in the Singapore blogosphere." Not too likely...
...Given the likes of 'Blogopoly' - a board game for Singaporean bloggers.
Oh, and go to the Hip-Hop Summit this weekend. Just 'cos.