James Newman...

Life Lessons

2019-12-06T05:35:00.001-08:00

Photo by Charlie Paradis

Charmingly British Peel The Limelight’s latest Life Lessons is a moving musical set mostly in the UK and Bangkok. Driven along by an original soundtrack written chiefly by local actor/musician Claire Stanley with Limelight peeling big cheese Peter O’Neil co-writing and directing this production is well worth checking out. Seasoned actor James Laver stars alongside Claire, Neil Anthony Rusia (once again BRILLIANTLY in drag), Thiptawan Uchai, and Kelly Jones as the voice of mum Mags.

Photo by Charlie Paradis

Relationships, family bereavement, fishing trips, and Sunday Roast recipes are the order of the day here. It is nostalgic, humorous, and engaging, we wept, we laughed, we sang, and we interacted. This all refreshing to see as the production collaborative move on to produce original narrative material with heart and soul. We were charmed by Life Lessons from beginning to end. The delivery and intention of all performances were totally engaging. If I had to nitpick, and sometimes I do, maybe the narrative should complete the circle at the wedding rather than the more dramatic conclusion the creators chose, but that is just one way to skin the cat, and if you don’t like cats you’re in good company. I hate cats, as do two of the cast, and we kinda feel they shouldn't. If you are in Bangkok this weekend you definitely won’t see a better show in any cinema, boxing ring, go-go bar, rock concert, cock-fighting ring, or transgender cabaret theater. Life Lessons is a success and a triumph – go see it while you can this weekend. These guys have raised the bar once again.

The Cave

2019-11-24T01:47:00.002-08:00

While Word Cup football fever took hold of the entire nation in the summer of 2018, youth football team The Wild Boarsbecame trapped, along with their coach, in the Tham Luang Cave Chang Rai province. News of the boy’s plight attracted worldwide media attention as cave diving experts flew in to Thailand to plan the rescue of the teenagers and their mentor from deep inside the flooded network.

The story had it all. The drama of a ticking clock - the next rain downfall expected to destroy the rescue operation, bureaucratic red-tape hindering potential rescuers armed with industrial pumps, the kindness of local people pitching together for a common good. A media circus brooding like a wake of vultures as the events tragically unfolded.

Human tragedy often invokes the kind of innate human goodwill that the mainstream media will have us believe doesn’t exist. Yet, in this case the media had it all handed to them in a silver-plated betel-nut spittoon. Adventure, quest, resolution.

And yes, a Happy Ending. The Cave has a hands on Thai-style Happy Ending. Against all odds the boys and their coach are safely evacuated from cavernous depths (while sedated with ketamine) by the team of international experts and diving crew. After two weeks of meditation, acute hunger and outstanding boredom a blinding ray of light and hope flickers strapped to a diver’s hardhat. The boys are rescued one by one in one of the most complex rescue events in modern history.

Predictably the rush to dramatize the rescue event was almost as feverish as the rescue event itself. Tom Waller’s The Cave film was released in Thai theaters this week. The film, based on a script written chiefly by Don Linder, boasts a huge ensemble cast documenting the cave rescue operation with enough authenticity to put this film in a category of docu-dramaor event reconstruction (a genre I just invented) rather than straight out narrative film. This is completely fine if one is hoping to learn how the rescue operation was, against all odds, accomplished.

Followers of the rule of thumb that art should surprise us, confound expectations, challenge belief structures, will no doubt concede that The Cave had no such lofty aspirations to exploit the factual events in exchange for entertainment. The Cave tells a story from beginning to end in the most honest and straight-forward film-making fashion possible. It is linear, logical, and edited tightly to fit our ever-decreasing attention spans. Employing local talent The Cave keeps Thailand films relevant and showcases a range of talents deployed and ready for action for future productions.

The Cave is the first feature length adaptation of the rescue event and possibly the final word. There is no central protagonist in this fly-on-the-wall docu-drama affair although Belgian diver Jim Warney comes close to that role. Cinematography by Wade Muller is slick and a film score by Oliver Lliboutry builds tension. A handful of extras are a little shaky on delivering but overall the film is grand and accomplished. The narrative is informative, and sometimes heart-warming. Essentially this first to market film of the cave rescue is a reconstruction of a wonderful story of human kindness and worth checking out if the escape grabbed your attention.

The film is out in Thai cinemas now.

Listen to the audio review of The Cave on This Strange Life podcast HERE.

A Tale of Two Cities

2019-10-14T15:12:00.001-07:00

"ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD is a return to classic form."

I wanted to believe it.

I arrived in good faith, even smuggled some cans of celebratory Cheers into the cinema, and as those micro-sports cars whizzed around the Hollywood Hills all seemed well. Bikini-hippie-babes roller-skate along streets dazzling with post-LSD charm, but what, apart from 1969 nostalgia is really happening? Forty minutes into the film Leo sits down next to a young girl actress on a Western film set. He's reading a paperback novel. "What's the story about?" the eight year-old asks the jaded actor. Sitting in the fifth row I'd been asking myself that very same question.

Where is the story? What is this about? Which character should I be rooting for, and more importantly why?

This is pure indulgence my friends, and without much in the way of narrative pay-off Quentin’s epic wanders elegantly all over tinsel town with no real sense of direction. We have little choice but to follow this tale like a dirty old man stalking an exotic woman around a decadent beach-side town. While the characters we meet are entertaining, the backdrop amazing, and the dialog razor-sharp, are we over-dosing on this trip? Shot by shot a masterwork in cinematography, casting, set-design, yet requires editing to be true to film format. A filmmaker has many aims - to have the audience's mind make cuts as the film plays isn't one of them. The narrative leans on an old technique to be fair. ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD's form takes the shape of the picaresque novel - a Spanish literary technique developed by Cervantes in 1554 – a roguish yet appealing hero (or heroes in this blockbuster’s case) of low social class who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. Events unfold without a necessary narrative consequence and one wonders if this would have been better formatted as a television series. We are eventually brought to the Manson punch-line without ever having ever gotten to know the real motivation behind the event in the first place. Is this intentional? Probably so. Is it wise? Perhaps not.

JOKER on the other hand is layer upon layer of narrative clues. Gotham City is experiencing a garbage strike and the rats have turned super. How about that for a set-up? When the garbage workers go on strike a city is really on it's knees. How socially and politically unstable have we become when we can’t even figure out refuse disposal? Our city is the equivalent of the angry teenager who’d rather play Far Cry than take out the trash.

Joker, dressed as a clown, working for a clown agency, is humiliated and beaten up by a bunch of teenage thugs while hawking for a discount store, his mother is dying, he discovers he’s adopted, his pharmaceutical drug supply is cut off and he's alienated from his pals at the clown agency. His descent is perfect in structure - a mentally sick man slowly growing more insane in a decaying city. His co-worker hands Joker a gun to protect himself, but while performing at a hospital children’s ward the gun slips out of his clown suit and he loses his job at the clown agency. Joker decides (or does he decide – is he the victim of consequence? Pay attention Quentin, pay close attention, buddy) to take out his anger through the language of the Chekhov's gun handed him by his co-worker. He executes a bunch of Wall Street thugs on the subway consequently spear-heading a social uprising. Layer upon layer of urban commentary oozes through this motion picture while setting the scene for the ultimate pay-off. It's a dark, smart, and sultry bitch of a movie.

Not since Clockwork Orange has the anti-hero stood so tall. Phoenix knocks it out of Gotham City park with a physical performance incorporating dance, comedy, drama, pantomime, and horror. This, my friends, is a moral tale, a meditation on gun control, civic duty, the pharmaceutical industry, social welfare, moral corruption, family values. In short this film shows us how we got to where we are. Tarantino’s film does that too, but more beautifully and from a picturesque abstract distance rather than an immediate dark present.

Watch both if you can.

Express Yourself

2019-05-26T23:41:00.000-07:00

It’s a minute after midnight in the darkest heart of the neon-flickering red night zone on Soi Nana, Bangkok, Thailand. You walk inside a dimly lit bar where Jackson Pollock reproductions hang beside brass exterior wall-features, dysfunctional water pipes, and wall-mounted speakers. The waitress serves drinks in an otherworldly fashion behind a zinc-topped bar, and you move a little closer to observe what’s lurking behind the waitress's purple eye-shadow and neon pink lip-gloss. Hands larger than your own, and feet longer and narrower, and at least a size nine. Her voice is lower, much lower than anticipated, and that shoulder-hip-ratio disproportionate for your average Siamese gentlewoman. You move a little closer and order a Chang beer Lite, and as you do the barmaid makes a move both astonishing and unexpected. She smiles while liberating a singular breast from her sports bra, squeezes it, and expresses right there on the spot, squirting milk out and into an adjacent coffee mug. She laughs in an octave close to Chris Rea’s The Road to Hell, and you tell her to not do it again. She does it again, but this time offers you a sweet taste of the milk of human kindness. Transgender love milk, baby, muscle-men love it long time.

Annie’s something of a local legend. Lactose Disciples (or LDs as they're known) pay homage to Annie’s weeping bosom the way Pilgrims worship the weeping Virgin Mary of Civitavecchia. They rub up against Annie muttering undecipherable conjurations while tying pieces of string around her wrists. Deeply superstitious locals consider Annie’s magical orbs an auspicious gift from the Gods to be revered deeply.

In a study called “Male Lactation” Professor Patty Macadam of the Department of Anthropology at The University of Toronto noted, “Lactation has been observed in animals and humans of both sexes.” In 1992 a team of scientists captured fruit bats from a rainforest south in the Krau Game Reserve, Pahang, Malaysia. Of the 10 mature males captured, each had functional mammary glands from which small samples of milk were expressed. In nature male lactation is physiologically possible and, according to Dr. Robert Greenblatt, milk production in males can be simulated by simply letting a bat suckle on a male teat for several weeks. You stare up to the ceiling half expecting a colony of fruit bats hungrily hanging upside down.

The phenomenon of men breastfeeding at will was explored in the 1978 book The Tender Gift by Dana Raphael and subsequently a small movement of Milkmen evolved. The Milkmenwere a collective movement of single and same-sex fathers who had elected to express independent of female intervention. In the case of Annie the Weeping Bargirl hormone replacements are not to be overlooked, yet without the pills she’d probably express herself in other ways. Hungry ruling class infants have busily suckled on the bosom of peasant wet nurses since the dawn of time. Ever since the groundbreaking 1867 breakthrough of Justus von Liebig’s rudimentary infant milk formula childless men and women have produced milk for the benefit of the well-heeled lactose hungry.

A sizable market for human milk exists online and among that consumer demographic an emerging market of bench-pressing males exist. Packed with nutrients some men consider the nutrient-rich white gold key to their success at the gym. Although adult breast milk addicts can sustain their vice frequenting sites such as OnlyTheBreast.com, there is a theory that transgender breast milk is better suited to bodybuilders owing to a special blend of hormones produced exclusively by male to female transition. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services breast milk contains just the right amount of fat, sugar, water, and protein to help growth. Ladyboy milk, it seems, can make you as fit as a butcher's dog (to use a well worn animal idiom), so why not get aboard and join the movement?

And you can. As long as bench-pressing and the usual cardio-vascular work-out routines are maintained transgender milk is the perfect supplement. Man can't live by milk alone. Lift and lick is the current slogan. And why not? Life is messy, unpredictable, propelled by strange quirks and unusual ticks and drips. Nature doesn’t always deal you the hands you wanted. So adapt to what you have and milk it for all that it's worth.

Life, is very strange.

Indeed.

.

Who's Watching Oliver?

2018-03-31T09:18:00.002-07:00

Who’s Watching Oliver?

A Film Review.

Tick tock goes the clock. The picture begins. We are in a room that looks like its straight from 1950s Middle America but is actually modern day Bangkok. Oliver counts out his pills from an old antique hardwood medicine box. He’s dressed in 1950s Beat wardrobe, and he’s clearly deeply disturbed. His condition, although never specified, is obviously somewhere within the autism spectrum. But that’s not all about Oliver that’s beat. Mama’s been on his case from an early age. She makes him kill. She enjoys it. And Mama does all this via Skype. With a cocktail in her hand and with the vocabulary of a Kilkenny fishwife, Mama, played wonderfully by Margaret Roche, is perhaps the most downright vulgar abusive female villain to be put to film.

Yes, we’re familiar with the theme, and of course Who’s Watching Oliver is Psycho for the modern age and Oliver, played by obsessively technical method actor Russell Banks, is a million times more disturbed than Norman Bates will ever be. Banks gets inside the skin of Oliver in a frightfully believable fashion and thoroughly deserves the awards he picked up on the festival circuit for best lead. This is a physically challenging performance, and Banks, in his first lead role, delivers the part well. He is Oliver for better or worse and Oliver must dance to the tune of the devil. The devil (aka Mama) finds work for idle hands, and Oliver gets his filthy little mitts dirty on numerous bloody occasions while banging to the beat of Mama's decadent drum.

Mama

But its not all blood and guts. Oliver has a routine set around a Disneyland type theme park. He visits the rides and snaps pictures and generally blends in with bizarre environment around him. Foreigners living in this part of the world are considered strange oddities, so the locals who observe Oliver’s eccentricities aren’t too concerned by the shambolic spectacle of his incurable nervousness. By night, Bangkok is a different beast. Thousands of bars, a labyrinth of debauched personalities, and it is here, egged on by his online psychopathic mother, Oliver hunts. The picture reaches its darkest depths as Oliver brings back Clair, played by promising newcomer Kelly Woodcock, to his home and ties her to a table. Mama watches on encouraging her son’s misbehavior like a demented lip-glossed Frankenstein. But if Oliver is a monster, surely the beast who created him is more grotesque, more evil, a force that must be stopped before the killing spree goes too far and Oliver spends the rest of his years twitching in jail.

And herein lays the theme of the film. Forget the blood, the gore, and the comedy – Oliver is at times hilarious. The picture is really a simple dark meditation on the abuse of the mentally ill. We are usually abused by those closest to us - a wife or husband, a mother or father. In the case of Oliver his Mama has a tight hold on him, as all mother’s do, but the hold here is destructive above and beyond normal maternal heartfelt strangulation. She's a bitch. Abusive cycles are difficult to break, but sometimes it takes another who has experienced similar patterns to recognize the symptoms and help a stranger out. Oliver’s olive branch arrives in the shape of Sophia played by Sara Malakul Lane. At first we wonder why she is approaching this profoundly limited personality, but her true motives eventually come to light. She wants to help him but first he must help himself by breaking the dysfunctional cycle. Together perhaps they can cut the evil puppeteer strings that Mama uses to manipulate Oliver. Perhaps they have a joint cause. At last there's a shimmer of light in the darkness.

Sophia

Technically the film is a triumph. Debutant feature film director Richie Moore’s camera and light work is as good as anyone’s and it shows clearly in the picture that Moore has quite literally grown up with a film camera in his hand. The script, co-written by Moore, Banks, and producer Raimund Huber (who also had a strong hand in the jazz music selection – nice touch) is darkly impressive. The picture is put together expertly by the editor Jesse Maddox. If you like your horror dark, and there’s not much darker than Oliver, you'll like this. It pushes boundaries, it shocks, but after waiting a year to see it, I'm glad to say it delivers. Who’s Watching Oliver will be distributed soon, and you’d be crazy not to see it.

Butterfly Man - A film.

2017-11-27T18:40:00.001-08:00

Aged 23 I had to see the world.
I had a friend traveling through South East Asia and she'd send me postcards and letters from Laotian paddy fields and tropical beaches – handwriting slanted slightly to the left, tales of opium dens, and body massages, it seemed magical, mysterious, partially undiscovered, I had to know more..

Secretly I made plans to travel East.

I read The Beachas did most of the other rat racers that summer and decided to hit the road. Consumed guidebooks at the rate Trump consumes cheeseburgers. India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Cambodia, a plan was hatched. By September 2001, just after the twin towers were struck, I was packed, all set, and ready to leave the West behind forever.

Sixteen years and a couple of months flash by and I’m sitting in the nine seat cinema at the Friese Green film club awaiting Kaprice Kea’s Butterfly Man - a film about a young man encountering Thailand for the first time. Also celebrating are a fair sized audience some of whom were involved in the original production. So we had all pretty much been here for the long haul, looking back on how things were a decade and half before, perhaps a little too rose-tintedly.

Adam arrives in Bangkok with his girlfriend and they abruptly split-up over a minor disagreement, but the relationship’s been on the slide for a while and when Adam finds his significant other in the guesthouse room next door with a dreadlocked sandal seller we know the honeymoon is truly over. Thailand has a habit of testing Western boy-girl-relationships and in this case the couple split in less than 24 hours.

The lovers split their separate ways and Adam heads to Ko Samui, determined to see out his holiday. Here he meets a character many of us know (and if we don’t know one we might just be him) - the middle-aged boozy expat not above dalliance with indigenous females – Joey - played brilliantly in this case by Francis Magee. Joey convinces Adam to visit a massage joint where we're introduced to Em the beautiful masseuse who Adam falls for and thus begins the vortex, the downward spiral, the lies, the mistruths, the deceptions that often follow an East West relationship.

Em retains her typical Thai conservative streak, hoping perhaps Adam will hold out for marriage and the house in the village. Inpatient and frustrated Adam hooks up with Noi one of the many bargirls on the beach and has to confess to Em that he has suddenly metamorphosed into a straight up, genuine Butterfly Man – a lover who goes from lady to lady, taking a piece of pollen from each as he so does. But Lady Fate doesn’t smile on those men who spread it about on the islands, things continue to spiral down for Adam his triangular love affair leading to him being drugged, and robbed and finally having to beg on the beach in a charming sequence of som nom na – serves’ you right.

Our old friend Joey returns and offers Adam a chance to make some quick cash on the neighboring Ko Phangnan. After some indecision he makes it over to meet a character named No Name, a statuesque blond, played by Abigail Good who pedals a shady sideline.

Adam uncovers a human trafficking ring and rescues Em by stowing her away on a boat where she lies in his arms, having married him in a brief ceremony conducted by the charmingly Thai boat captain. Events unfold in a tragically entertaining fashion and this is all weaved together seamlessly as the final twist and turns lead Adam to Em’s Isaan village where he is making a new life for himself in thereal Thailand.

Overall a rewarding picture. The score by Stephen Bentley-Klein is worth mentioning along with the title track by Skye Edwards (formerly of the band Morcheeba). Producer Tom Waller did a sterling job putting it all together and the cinematography was at times sublime. The acting from the foreign cast was impressive throughout and a few roles really shone. A film entitled Butterfly Man was bound to have the odd Thai / foreigner cliché, and was at times charmingly naïve, but that doesn’t take anything away from the movie. This is in many ways a better, more honest movie than Danny Boyle’s adaptation of The Beach and for those who first came to the Kingdom before the omnipresent mobile telephone, cyber stickers, and emjois Butterfly Man is a nostalgic treat full of personal memories and hidden rewards and it is well worth hunting down a copy or a download.

You can buy the DVD HERE

Ghost House

2017-09-04T22:45:00.001-07:00

There’s just something about a packed cinema theater in the center of town. We’d arrived just after the billed show-time and have settled for front row seats – that's me, and and my eleven-year-old son Louie, who is underage for this 15 rated movie, but what are dads there for if not for smuggling underage kids into theaters to watch adult horror movies?

GHOST HOUSE begins with a gorgeous shot - tangerine sunset, airplane landing on Bangkok concrete and we know we are in pretty safe hands with director Rich Ragsdale's team.

Julie and Jim are on a romantic holiday in exotic Thailand. They get engaged using somewhat expository dialog, and enjoy the sights and sounds of the city. It's a bit clunky but it looks great and sounds good and the story is set up early on. We know that Julie's camera and her curiosity aren't leading anywhere pleasant.

Julie busies herself with photographing spirit houses (what could go wrong there, then?) when the couple meet two fellow travelers who are out to trick them.

Fast forward to a night out in Bangkok's (or was that shot in Pattaya?) and the following morning spells a trip to a spooky forest where an ancient curse is transferred to Julie. She's swiftly possessed by an angry ghost and before long Julie is laid down in Gogo's relative's shack as the local monks try to unsuccessfully dislodge the spirit from her.

Their driver and guide Gogo is played by talented Bangkok actor Michael New who sparks some Thai fun and humor into proceedings. Russell Geoffrey Banks cheekily plays Robert the untrustworthy fellow traveler, and, Mark Boone Jr plays the jaded expat who has some local knowledge.

There's some sweet red filtered cinematography as the couple seek out Boone Jr in the seedy part of town. As it transpires the jaded expat knows some locals and they discover that the curse is like a ghostly hot potato that must be passed on to another if Julie is to be freed of the spell.

The film plays out predictably but satisfactory with some nice twists towards the end. The jump factor at the cinema was real enough with some screams coming from behind. I particularly enjoyed the circular plot pattern of Gogo meeting new tourists fresh off the plane - thus the horror will continue,

My only real niggle with the story is that we don't get to understand the antagonist as much as I'd liked to. What makes her tick, what does she want? Will she come back?

All in all GHOST HOUSE is a pleasant surprise for horror in the region and guess what? No CGI - just a great film score, locations, excellent supporting cast, nifty make-up, overall a worthwhile cinema experience if horror is your thing.

8/10

Playing at theaters in Bangkok now.

On Something

2017-08-25T01:44:00.001-07:00

THREE new books in a new series.

On Isaan chronicles my very first short stories.

On Pulp is a collection of the early pulp stories.

On Bangkok a number of articles written about my adopted home.

These are up for grabs on all the usual platforms.

On Bangkok is FREE on iTunes.

All are up for sale and all the usual platforms.

Picture by Mark Desmond Hughes

The Gong of the Pong

2017-05-11T21:25:00.005-07:00

I’m late for the show I curse myself walking up the three flights of stairs.

Walls decorated with lucid graffiti, a black cat shimmies past, and that dubious odor bringing back inner-city memories of the council flat kind. There's an elevator leading up to where the Black Pagoda stands predatory above Pat Pong Two - but - we got no time to wait - through two industrial doors, towards the band who are launching into a familiar number:

Waiting for my Man.

The crowd are young, old, hipster, mobster, industrial, New Age, Asian, Pan Asian, Western, and alien. Go-go dancers mingle between the crooks and trannies in the crowd....

Matthew Ficsher and his Band launch into The Velvet Underground’s Waiting for my Man.

I complemented Gary Boyle after this, their final song, and told him I dug his skillful rendition of John Cale’s sarcastic bass line from the debut banana record. “I just listened to the live double album a couple of days ago,” he smiled.

Of course Boyle is testing me - every schoolboy knows Doug Yule bothered the four strings on that live record. John Cale left the group and stuck around in New York.

And who could blame him? - Performing to strippers and Drag Queens at Andy Warhol’s Factory or middle road obscurity playing in an empty basketball court in Utah?

Which would you chose?

John Cale chose the dirty gritty gender bending underground, and tonight, ladies and gentleman, so have we.

Next on stage Murder Bizkitz

The four piece play a hybrid of death metal guitar, with punk sneer and snatches of melody that have the dancing girls, well, dancing. Singer Amy Anthrax works the stage well, and the band are tight and full of beans.

This is all looking promising...

The fresh-faced singer for Penny Time looks pretty much at home in the The Black Pagoda. And so he should, the band have some tunes. The crowd are lifted, the dancers explore their options and the night whirls on to the rhythm of the Rickenbacker.

Progressive indie outfit Count the Thief are next on stage and blast through a flawless set, the crowd are liking it, we have the sense we're at an event. Singer Danny jokes with the crowd between songs as the night accelerates forward.

Degaruda are what the people have been waiting for. The band are playing another farewell gig in the city soon, and you'd be foolish not to catch them. Intricate guitar work, complex melodies, this is an intelligent, accomplished band performing at a top level and the perfect headline act for The Gong of the Pong.

Bar Manager and entrepreneur Joe Delaney has pulled off what might be a first for Bangkok - progressive live local bands performing back to back in a red light gentleman's club.

It may be a new direction for Bangkok, but back in Europe it's wondrously old hat. The Beatles left their Merseyside stomping grounds to play a two year stint of gigs in German strip clubs.

Haven’t times changed?

Or have they?

The Beat Goes On ...

Next up at the Gong of the Pong is the Beatles Versus The Stones.
Check the page here for DETAILS

Sound and Vision.

2017-01-08T08:14:00.002-08:00

FUN CITY PUNCH.

The audio version of the book is just about to be released and here's a sneak preview. Read by Jon Wilkins, with music by Keith Nolan, and camera work by Alasdair McLeod

The Beat Goes On....

The Bloody Road to Kampot (or the trouble with Happy Pizzas, or the Acid Writing Conference, or the shame about the Hula-Holigans and the fear of technological acid meltdown.)

2016-11-11T23:50:00.001-08:00

YOU’D BE forgiven for thinking the fogs of pollution hugging Phnom Penh’s airport tastes like the aftermath of some recent oil refinery explosion before you hit the herbal haze that permeates the bars and guesthouses.

The Place

Here we are on street 172, a Chinese man walks up and down the street selling locally sourced fabric money pouches… No, I don't want a Tuk-Tuk, or to jump on the back of your motorcycle, but, hey, thanks for asking. Opposite stands an establishment named the Black Pearl, next to that a printing shop, and here we are at the White River Guesthouse.

A Westerner with Eastern leanings wears a turban and smokes something life-enhancing in a clay pipe while his hands dance to an inaudible rhythm.

TripAdvisor has a lot to answer for.

Sign into the guestbook.

Name: James Newman

Occupation: Acid Crime Writer.

Permanent address: Here, man.

“What are you here for?”

“Here for the readers and writer’s convention.”

Bell boy nods sagely and points to my luggage and hands me a key.

Upstairs my room, number 303, has a mirrored wardrobe that I'm too scared to open.

You know that old dead body in a wardrobe trick that the Cambodians like to pull on you?

No?

Well, you should do.

The moment you open the door and take a peek inside at the decomposing corpse you’re part of the freaking conspiracy.

Then they got you.

The Product

So let sleeping dogs, or rotting corpses, lie, or die, or whatever they do, but never open the closet door in a five dollar hotel room in Phnom Penh.

There's a funeral party right across the street, bells jingle jangle, the intermittent wailing of holy men. Maybe they slipped the body out of the ceremony and hid it in my wardrobe?

What other party tricks do these people play?

Downstairs in the restaurant none of the staff have it in them to switch on the electric fans. One US dollar gets me a cup of rich syrupy coffee. Two locals come inside play pool and proposition the waitress, she manages to glare back and hits them both with what can only be an ancient Khmer curse.

The first man wears a ratty T-shirt with a Lamborghini badge on the breast pocket as he flashes some local currency around but he’s kidding no one. Perhaps he is the murderer of the corpse in my closet, maybe a contract killer, foolishly throwing around ill-earned gains as his victim enters stage one rigor mortis in the mirrored wardrobe of room 303.

Now my mind’s racing from a contact high from that Trustafarian who’s smoking at the bar, and that body in the wardrobe upstairs has probably been grasped out of its resting place, filched to another room, to another unsuspecting wardrobe-door-opening-mark.

Decide to order from the menu but the service is slow, wait almost an hour for a can of coke, food takes longer, apparently, much longer.

Hmm.

Must be still moving the body, then.

Or perhaps this is a trick to make the place look fuller, get more customers inside, maybe I’m being paranoid, maybe it’s the coffee?

Maybe they spiked me?

You get that feeling a lot here.

Happy Pizza joints stand proudly all over the proverbial shop in the city, alas not one single “Anxiety-ridden-terrible-fear-of-sudden-death-pizza-joint,” and not a single “Huge-overwhelming-regret-brought-on-by-sudden-waves-of-inexplicable-empathy-flooding-thru-my-mind-like-a-terrible-locomotive-of-cruel-self-realization-pizza-joint.”

Oh no, it’s all Happy Pizza.

Happy. Happy. Happy.

Like I say, I’m here for the Acid Conference.

I’m here for ART.

Instead of ART I gingerly tip-toe back up to room 303 and stare at that mirrored wardrobe door knowing whatever inside radiates awful malevolent properties.

One day I shall return to that cupboard and conquer my fear, for what evil within it shall be quashed by the benevolent strength of my acid-flexed psychological muscle.

But all in good time.

Next day I meet the International Man of Mystery.

International Man of Mystery

The Man, as he is also sometimes known, lives out of a suitcase and has no visible means of financial support, but is always well funded and supportive of the ARTS and at his hotel he had booked a cab and a driver to this end.

Our driver, let’s call him Sam, was quick to tell us he was an orphan and the circumstances of how he acquired his brand new SUV were “a long story,” two hours later Sam has told us about how he grew up in his family village where the roads were filled with pot holes you could throw a pool party in.

How these two stories gelled both a mystery to both I and to the International Man of Mystery, and probably to you, the reader too, but we’ve all been thrown some tall stories by cabbies before.

Casually I ask our driver Sam if he is also performing at the fiction festival, and for a terrifying moment I think he understands me as he races in between lanes of fierce traffic, me and the Man of Mystery trying to keep our conversation poignant, knowing that each and every line spoken could well be our last.

We arrive at the festival and survey the area.

First panel was Crime fiction.

“What are you doing for female authors in the region?”

Well, teaching six year olds English every day in school isn’t a bad start, I suppose.

Being a crime writer from Bangkok has its moments, but one of the most testing is when you’re cast as a misogynist; in my books, the women outsmart the men every time, if you don’t read them you won’t know that, but making that assumption isn’t a crime – even if you’re a woman.

Crime panel over, I head off to Couch Potatoes for a well- deserved beer and a chat with the owner who along with the taxi driver had some of the best stories in town that week.

The Hula-Lady Yolanda Iseley is from Glastonbury performs magical moves with flashing lights inside her hula-hoop with arts group Hula-Holigans.

The idea was obvious, to ask her to perform at the Acid Writing event the following night. Sadly the dance wasn’t to be. Technical difficulties at the theater, and well, we didn’t end the night on the high we’d expected and I’ll regret that we didn’t end the show with a dance, but the talks just about made up for it.

Rapping about Burroughs and the 1960s counter culture will never be a chore, it was a joy, even Neal Cassidy got himself a mention.

And then the festival was over, the long drive back to the city, the guesthouse, and the wardrobe awaited me.

Back in room 303 I decide to do it.

Open the wardrobe door.

Inside sits one hand-rolled cigarette.

Should I be terrified or ecstatic?

Or both?

Why I Watch Cartoons....

2016-08-03T21:59:00.001-07:00

You want to learn how to write?

How to create story?

Watch animation.

Oh yes, I have reverse engineered Penguins of Madagascar in an attempt to discover the brilliance of pure story-telling. I’ve taken Mr. Bean apart piece by piece and put him back together again. This happens when you teach English to young learners. Nemo has not just been found, that little fishy has been discovered, examined, and dissected on a petri dish piece by bloody piece. Each part of that perfect production examined under microscopic lens. My students lost in the story have little idea that their teacher is pulling it apart and discovering the beauty of story-telling.

Want to learn about economy of story? To know what parts to leave out? Watch feature length animation. You are NOT allowed to become lost in that story, oh no, you must analyze it. Watch it cold and make notes and you will see that nothing in animation happens accidentally. The cartoonist’s world is a world of foreshadowing and manipulation. Pure story.

These films are fluid, perfect, not a wasted frame, not a wasted moment – they can’t waste time, it is too expensive. You want to learn how to write stories? Check out Toy Story, particularly the third one. I have chills thinking about how brilliant the final scenes are.

So watch cartoons. Take these films apart and put them back together again. Apply it to your own world and your own work. A story is a story whether it be for adults or kids. It is there to entertain.

How does it entertain?

By being entertaining.

Your job is to discover how.

Took my kids, week in and week out, to the cinema, buckets of coke and wheelie bin sized popcorn containers, we sat in the theater to watch every new release.

They get to escape into another world. I get to work out this thing called story.

Perfect.

But it wasn’t to last.

Before we knew it the boys had graduated from animation, and traversed to action and drama. Star Wars was okay, Pan was great, but Life of Pi was ultimately the best feature we watched together. Not ashamed to admit I wept as I realized the adaptation was all it should have been. Crying in the cinema, yeah, weeping because you know the filmmaker had nailed it.

Now the kids have grown up, we watch horror, and comedy. Yet I still have an ache and a need to watch animation, luckily I have my students who are happy to watch childish flicks.

Now if you will excuse me I have an appointment with Big Hero Six.

Words on writing...

2016-07-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, living in rural Thailand I needed a desk, and was introduced to the local carpenter, who was a lonely soul and for the most part incoherent. But then again I wasn’t far behind him.

A desk was needed so I followed him to his workshop. We cracked open a bottle of beer Chang and he ushered me into his domain.

Inside were the most incredibly beautiful pieces of half-finished furniture. Hard wood teak tables rubbed and polished yet missing one leg. Ornate chairs beautifully carved yet to be upholstered and cushioned. Doors, again, hardwood, carved illustrations of peacocks etched into the wood grain.

Sun rays shone into this man’s workshop, reflections danced over his creations.

He may be antisocial, an outcast in the village, but his work, I concluded, was awesome.

I drew the plans for the desk, left the workshop, and waited, and waited, and waited.

Four or five months the desk arrived. A beautiful piece, huge work surface, piano style legs, drawers lined with green felt. This was without doubt the most perfect piece of furniture I’d ever bought and it was well worth the wait.

The desk had to be perfect as it were to be the desk on which I’d type the novel that I’d been threatening myself to complete. Once, that is, I’d extracted it from the battered pages of notebooks that I had assembled over two years of traveling around Asia. The novel was Bangkok Express, much of which was written on that desk in Surin, the other portions typed out in the Business Inn, Bangkok, Sukhumvit Road.

So the desk arrived and I sat down at it and began the journey.

I opened word, I opened a file, I began typing. Found a flow, two chapters turned into four, five into ten; then the material inexplicably dried up.

The notebooks exhausted, the blank screen stared back at me with menacing intent.

What to do now?

The answer was simple. Open another a file. A new idea for a novel. This idea really had wings, hell it was better than the last idea; a boy with magical powers disappears during a game of chequers. Sounds great, yeah? I worked on this one. I worked really hard. Somewhere around chapter twelve I ran out of steam. Again the screen stared back at me like a broke debt collector on a rainy Lewisham afternoon.

No problem. Another file, click, open, this time a story about the population of Bangkok turning into humanoid lizards.

How could this not fly?

It didn’t.

No worries, another file, a cashless society, fight the government for a return of legal tender. This is high concept right here, how can it fail? Tap, tap, tap. This is bloody brilliant. Chapter twenty-three, hmmm. What about that lizard story? Maybe the lizard war is fought at a popular nightlife venue. Let’s get back to that book. Almost finished. Tap, tap tap. Maybe Bangkok Express needs some love. Back to that, back to this, back to that again.

Tap, tap, tap bloody tap.

And of course…

My hard drive on my computer resembled the carpenter’s workshop. Manuscripts in various stages of completion are littered all over the proverbial shop. He had half-chairs, I had half-novels. This is the way I work and it always will be. The best stuff comes when distracted from doing what I should be doing. This article came about because the pub I choose to have lunch in switched off their wireless internet. A neat trick, Kiwi Pub, keeps the customer traffic flowing. But little do they know most of my work is a reaction to what I should be doing. My favorite scenes written while I should have been writing, or doing something else, something important, practical, something that pays the bills.

So don’t feel to pressure to complete that novel, that article, that short story or poem. Let it bake, let it mature, grow.

Because when you force things to happen they appear forced and that’s not a good look. Take a leaf from my carpenter’s book. Keep ‘em waiting and deliver the goods.

Trust the carpenter.

DEATHTRAP

2016-07-11T04:38:00.001-07:00

Sydney played by F.C Nieuwoudt is a playwright on the slide. He penned The Murder Game, but since then his ideas have dried up. He stagnates in his Bangkok apartment wondering where his next hit will come from. The set and the space are well designed and eye-catching in this Bangkok production. We feel like we are in that apartment as Sydney’s wealthy wife Myra played by Cherene Knop sweeps the apartment and converses while Sydney manfully drinks what we assume is prop brandy, striding around his man cave contemplating his future with a grizzled outlook and a jaded delivery typical of a scribe on the slide.

Knop and Nieuwoudt. Photo Loni Berry

Nieuwoudt plays the part solidly and convincing without a glimmer of hesitation or pause the entire show. Good strong delivery and expert timing from the young South African, and Knop, also from South Africa handles her part confidently, although perhaps a slight notch too enthusiastic with the screams when young Sirisak Pituck is apparently offed in the first act.

The set designed by Loni Berry with help from Bangkok drama students consists of various weaponry; props from past fame, various knives, guns, a pair of Houdini’s handcuffs make for a subtle Chekhov’s gun. I found myself drawn to the room, and it was a nice touch to switch the location in the dialogue to Bangkok. There's a sense of audience participation, of being part of the show.

Pituck and Nieuwoudt. Photo. Loni Berry.

So on with the plot. Salvation arrives, perhaps, in the shape of a script entitled DEATHTRAP. It has drama, excitement, it will put the bums back in the theater seats, it will drive Bangkok crazy and the audience will be hungry for more. The script is written by Clifford and played by the aforementioned Sirisak Pituck.

Sydney invites the young scriptwriter over to discuss the work. But foul play is afoot as Sydney plots the removal of Clifford's body having stolen the script. “We'll put him in the back of the car, drive up to Isaan, and we bury him,” he tells his distraught wife.

But Clifford is alive all along and the victim is now Myra. We keep up with the plot, the twists and turns, screams and laughs and the murder. Following Myra's murder an onstage kiss and the young scriptwriter Clifford is now to become Sydney's live in lover, secretary, and collaborator.

Belletti and Nieuwoudt. Photo Loni Berry.

Despite a visit from his lawyer played by celebrity cyclist Ross Cain and a psychic Helga played by attractive Italian model Cecilia Belletti things seem to be running along smoothly. Until, that is, it comes to light that the younger man has an idea for a new play that would put the pair in an uncomfortable position with the law. The action heats up.

There are relationships here, character development, twists and turns and much humor along the way, As things spiral quickly towards a succession of final twists we are left satisfied with a finale that we didn't see coming. This is a tight production of a popular Broadway smash and it delivers on the BKK stage.

Although director Loni Berry’s run was short, just a week, with Deathtrap in Bangkok there are rumors that the DEATHTRAP may run again. We can only hope so . This is a neat two act one set production and we look out for more from the Culture Collective Studio production team.

The Beat Goes On in Bangkok.

Stick Figures Bangkok.

2016-06-25T20:44:00.001-07:00

Photo: Production Promo.

Josh Ginsburg’s Stick Figures has landed in Bangkok with performances in both English and Thai in a production directed and designed by Pattarasuda Anuman Rajadhon, I caught the English performance on Thursday night.

Stick Figures plays at the Thonglor Art Space. Take a right down a skinny alley, past a florist shop, and up a flight of steep fire stairs and through an industrial entrance. Floor to ceiling windows, a coffee bar, and some sofas and chairs lounge in minimalist style. Down a flight of stairs into the performance area where a modular set sits and a swing hangs from the ceiling.

Lights dim, action.

A mother, father and son are grieving the loss of their seventeen year old daughter. What better way to soften their pain than to hire a surrogate daughter to play the part of their daughter? Why not have the daughter move into the family home and act as she did, speak as she would have spoken - the family can remain as normal.

Photo Credit. Natty's phone.

What could possibly go wrong?

That’s where Molly steps in - a professional surrogate who gathers all information from the grieving relatives and steps in to play the part of the dead. Another of Molly’s clients is Samual who has lost his wife to cancer, the pair were having bedroom problems before she left him. Hire a surrogate to act as his dying lover. What could go wrong here?

Star of the show Sasapin Siriwanji plays her surrogate parts with chilling ease, switching from the seventeen year old daughter to the dying wife of Samuel played by Bangkok stage regular James Laver. I particularly liked the character develop of Molly who appears at first to be a callous broker of loss, but has, of course her own reasons, and her own scars to hide. Scars revealed and examined by Peevara Kitchumnongpan who impressively plays grieving brother Graham with an emotional range admirable for an actor of his age. Quanchanok Chotimukta’s part as mother Carol owned a humorous kitchen table coffee scene, and Dennis played by Cholatep Nabangchang was consistent in his performance as husband and father.

Huge credit goes to design. The set switches from kitchen table to teenage bedroom to doomed lover’s nest enabling fluid scene changes as the action segues from one interwoven tale to another. As the play drew to a close and in the most powerful scene, leaves of A4 paper rained down on the cast from a printer rigged up with the ceiling lights. A wonderful touch.

Match Figures plays in both English and Thai, but be quick final show is on the 29^thJune.

PUSH THE PUNCH

2016-06-21T19:13:00.003-07:00

So it has ARRIVED.

FUN CITY PUNCH.

Ah, it's here.

Two years of working everyday. Writing and rewriting. Blood, sweat and tears. Seems to have taken up such a large part of my life that it seems a shame to let it go. But go away it must and hopefully it finds some friends out there in the big bad world and comes back and tells me about it..

Here's the promo and some review clips.

Private Eye Joe Dylan’s Fun City is corrupt to the bone and under the ever watchful surveillance system known as the Eye. Money has been abandoned in favor of the credit system. All citizens are required to carry hand held devises containing their credit score and personal information. Joe Dylan is recovering from the government attitude adjustment program known as the Punch since his credits reached zero. His adopted son Jimmy is missing presumed dead and his basement office is infested with contrarian rats. When Dylan is assigned the task of keeping socialite artist Trixie Sloane on the straight and narrow his pursuit of her leads him down into a sub-culture beneath the city where a vigilante Resistance force plan to strike out against the city before the last drop of human will is drained away.

FUN CITY PUNCH - A NOVEL by James Newman.

Here's what the critics say about the series.

'James Newman writes with a flamethrower. He's terrifically gifted and enormously energetic' Edgar nominated Timothy Hallinan.

'A world of conman,cheaters, schemers, wanderers, and the lost' Shamus winning author Christopher G. Moore.

'A Fascinating hybrid of classic detective work and gritty ultra-detail' Ish Galvan author of Splatter Island.

'Hard-boiled pulp fiction pumped up to the max' Paul Brazill.

'Newman's specialty is hard-hitting, brass-knuckles prose' Jim Algie.

'A world where most of the humans are behaving like primitive bugs and reptiles' Noir artist Chris Coles

'Exploration of the garish netherworld of private eyes, prostitutes, pimps,gangsters, cops and dirty tricks' Tom Vater Chang Mai City News.

OUT NOW with the following retailers:

Amazon Kindle: https://goo.gl/oQGFXA

SPP Press: http://spankingpulppress.com/books/fun-city-punch/

Kobo: http://goo.gl/9nhDK6

Page foundry: http://goo.gl/WwBWNU

iBooks: http://goo.gl/CPeqLn

New Bangkok Noir Thriller

2016-05-25T06:26:00.002-07:00

James and John are chilling in The Beach Hut slurping back Papa Dobles - An icy blend of white rum and fresh grapefruit and lime juices, sweetened with a splash of maraschino liqueur and sugar syrup. The sun is setting and the waves are rushing up the beach. Ebb and flow. Ebb and flow. Not unlike the writing process.

James gazes out into the pink sunset and takes a small sip of the cocktail.

New Book

JN: Like a Moth to a Flame” is a rollercoaster of a book, and I get the impression that you really enjoyed writing this one. What was the most enjoyable part of the process this time, dude?

JD: I live in a small town in a beautiful country and I have access to a wonderful walking track alongside a rushing river covered by a canopy of native trees. It takes one minute from my house to access this. While the most satisfying aspect of writing is always sitting back at the end of the night and reviewing what I've written, coming out of the zone and wondering how the hell it got there, the most enjoyable part was different. It was walking in nature, listening to music, separating myself from my real life and sinking my mind into the story as I walked and plotted. Every single scene was conceived while walking in nature. The words themselves, came out of those walks every night once I entered the writing zone. What happens in the zone is hard to explain. Writers will understand. Shit happens.

JN: That's beautiful. Often I speak with writers, published and unpublished, and their real purpose is to be recognized, to be admired, to be famous, or whatever, and I think to myself that the real reward from writing is the writing itself, or the thinking about the story, not any sort of end game, but the process of writing. Now that the book is finished is there a big gap in your life? Or are you straight into the next project?

JD: I'm straight into the next project which continues Nick Adamson's journey. I've found a process that works for me. The only hold up is finding time to have those regular walks. Summer time is easy. I'm a school teacher and a solo father. And it is winter here so time is much shorter. I can only guarantee two walks rather than five so the process is slower. Bring on summer.

The process is the most important thing and the most enjoyable. But the most satisfying is sitting down at my laptop after bedtime stories and pounding out a thousand words a night. Then those walks become incredibly rewarding and addictive. Without them I end up watching cooking shows on TV and waking up the next morning feeling unfulfilled.

Fuck you, Gordon Ramsey.

JN: For me it is the bus journey in the morning. There is something about movement, solitary movement that allows a story to grow and flourish. The pages of Moth turn quickly, the reader has a sense of movement. Where do you see the story moving forward to? Who is Nick Adamson and how much of him is you?

JD: Nick is a smart guy but hurt and vulnerable. He has experienced great emotional losses which he thinks makes him fearless. Because of this he is often reckless and exhibits maverick behaviours but always with his heart in the right place. Nothing of him is me but there is a great deal of me in him, if that makes sense. To quote you: "Every author is the sum of two things – the books he’s read and the life he has lived." Nick exemplifies this. He comes from me, from Hemingway, from Stephen King, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, Jean Paul Satre, but most of all he comes from the social setting of Thailand and specifically, Bangkok and what it does to men.

The story is moving to another chapter in Nick's life where he is caught tight in a web of corruption.

It is provisionally titled "Escapology".

JN: How much of a sequel is Like a Moth to a Flame to your first Nick Adamson novel," Cut Out The Middleman"? How closely are they connected?

Photo: Alasdair McLeod

JD: They are only connected by the main character, Nick Adamson. The stories stand alone and are quite different in purpose and style. Middleman is more of an action adventure backpacker story set on a beach while Moth is pure Bangkok Noir. Here is the blurb for Middleman: "Nick Adamson only planned on being in Thailand for a week. But a week later he is running a beach bar, selling drugs to tourists, falling out with the police, falling in love with a hot blonde, and dueling with an out-of-control, drug lord. Cut Out the Middle Man follows Nick’s descent into the illicit underworld of beach life and the dysfunctional characters who operate beneath the thin veneer of paradise islands."

Like a Moth to a Flame picks up on Nick's life some years later as a Bangkok expat and develops the character within a fresh conflict. They can be read independently of each other. Like a Moth to a Flame could easily sit alone without being referred to as "Book 2". In fact I like to think of Middleman as a prequel rather than Moth as a sequel

JN: You mentioned the city of Bangkok and what it does to foreign men, this is something we have spoken about before. What is it about Bangkok that sees so many visitors burn out like a moth to a flame?

JD: Good question. Probably more intriguing that the best question in film: "What is the Matrix?" And that is probably where the answer lies. Bangkok is escape, fantasy, deception.

Morpheus:"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill -- the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill -- you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."

Living in Bangkok is like taking the red pill. You get to see what is real and what is fantasy once you get to experience it and live it over time.

Photo: Alasdair McLeod

Once you take the red pill you get sucked in to a different world where it is impossible to go back. The Flame could be anything; Bangkok itself, hot women, easy money, reinvention of self, false friendships and false promises, addictions. Just name your weakness; Bangkok will expose it. Expose and exploit it.

JN: I like the Ronny character in your novel, he seems to have made a life for himself in Bangkok.

JD: He is a very cool character. A Bangkok old hand. Seen it all.

He exists in the corner of many a Bangkok haunt.

Photo: Stickman

The sort of guy who would have shed a tear when Washington Square was cruelly taken from us by those heartless buzzkilling developers who have yet to develop.

Bastards.

JN: Well, Washington Square is now a dinosaur theme park..

JD: At least Queens Park Plaza is still alive and well and features prominently in the novel. There were photos of a key setting, Crazy Girl Bar, in a recent Stickman photo essay.

I am proud to say that I played for the Crazy Girl Bar in the Bangkok Pool League for a few years.

JN: It is only a matter of time before places like Patpong and NEP will fall to developers. I feel that Cowboy will remain as a tourist attraction. It really is a beautiful neon spectacular and very much part of the tourist list of attractions.

Times change.

Bangkok is changing.

And Nick becomes wrapped up in the New Bangkok in the next book?

JD: Does he ever! Locked in tight with the Police against his will. If you impregnate a Police Chief's daughter then you take what you’re given and have to find a way out. Sounds like vintage Nick Adamson, right?

LIKE A MOTH TO A FLAME CAN BE FOUND HERE

Joe Dylan Ten Years Old.

2016-05-18T04:39:00.001-07:00

The publication of the fifth Joe Dylan book is approaching us, and my main man Joe has reached his tenth birthday. Ten years ago, 2006, I published the book I had begun writing when I arrived in Thailand – Bangkok Express. The first edition in the plain brown cover appeared as a print on demand edition, sold a handful of copies, and disappeared without having made much of a ripple in the world of crime fiction. Joe reappeared as an eBook in 2010 published by Bangkok Books and by that time the second in the series Red Night Zone (available for free download HERE) was well under way.

In the very first 2006 edition Dylan was recovering from a divorce and struggling with alcohol issues while living above a chippy in a London suburban street. By the third White Flamingomy hero was shooting china white at a Jack the Ripper copy-cat crime scene in a tropical crime metropolis. Now in 2016’s Fun City Punch Dylan has been blasted nine years into the future to a cash-free brave new world where government surveillance is rife. Self-mutilated transhumanists languidly stroke exotic pets while tripping on scopolamine shakes.

Hasn't the boy done well?

I already had the character mostly formed in my mind when my son was born in 2004 and I decided to name both my character and my son Joe Dylan. Five books later, translations into Spanish and Italian, audio books, and a film adaptation in the works, I may have managed to set up my character Joe with a footing as solid as his namesake Joe Dylan Newman who began high school this week.

Well done, Joe.

And well done, Joe.

But how did Dylan evolve?

Stirring this question around in my mind on the Bangkok bus (the place and the time where all the ideas come is the morning bus journey) I came to the conclusion that there are two main sources of inspiration for my birthday boy private eye.

Every author is the sum of two things – the books he’s read and the life he has lived.

Dylan evolved from a fascination with two authors.

First up and without a shadow of a doubt the writer who has influenced my writing most is a Belgium cartoonist named Herge.

There, I said it.

Herge

Hah! Newman’s finally lost the plot. But stay with me here, I think I can explain. Hold on.

But first let me tell you the second.

The second writer who has influenced me the most is an American novelist, some of you may have heard of, by the name of William Burroughs.

A strange mix you may think, but, there is always a connection between two influences and that connection with these two is, believe it or not, the Boy Scouts.

Burroughs and Herge both lived by the code. Herge was a full blown member of the scout movement during his youth and his early Tintin is basically a grown up scout masquerading as a journalist. Burroughs not only wrote a book entitled The Revised Boy Scout Manual, he, always prepared, stockpiled methadone in his garage in preparation for the impending nuclear apocalypse.

Herge began his career writing for far right publications. Tintin and the Soviets, the Congo comic strip, and even Tintin’s adventures into America were written, with a fast deadline approaching, and were made pretty much to order, and in to be fair, pretty poor taste. His later adventures were landmark crusades detailing good over evil with breath-taking attention to detail and as such, Tintin, adapted over the years, his moral compass was firmly in place to the extent that he was read and enjoyed in every part of the world except, curiously, America.

Herge was at times a genius, a hard-working genius, and one who often worked too hard but he was a great, and in my mind a master of plot and research. Perhaps he was one of the best plotters of the twentieth century..

Novelists, whoever they are, struggle with plot development. While writing the Dylan series over the last ten years I’ve written myself into and out of countless holes. During these moments of frustration I will often turn to one of the Tintin books, and go through Herge’s process of story construction. The Castiafore Emerald is a mystery in which the culprit (a magpie) of the crime is pictured in the very first frame. I used this idea in one of the Dylan series – the killer is in the first grisly scene.

Anti-plot Burroughs, was a gifted writer who, spare the first two, could never lay down a coherent sequence of events over the course of a novel. Burroughs was hopeless when it came to plot. He did, however, write Naked Lunch, with a little help from his friends, and Burroughs, whether you like it or not, basically predicted the future of the Western consumer society before he began to get a bit too handy with a pair of scissors and destroyed any chance he had of a mainstream career. Burroughs imagery in my mind has yet to be equaled in modern fiction.

Burroughs

Herge saw the problems in the world and made us understand them and Burroughs tried, but ultimately failed to prescribe a remedy, yet left us with a sense of the condition we now find ourselves in.

So perhaps Dylan is what happens when good intentions go astray.

Both men were men of principles. Reclusive men who chose their friends well. They were both leaders of their respective fields, not always championed by the establishment, and often subject to persecution. Both men were exiles for a time. Burroughs for most of his life. They were welcomed back to the Fatherland. Herge played golf with the king of Belgium.

Both men were masters of picking up on the current political and recycling it for our humorous digestion and there seems to be an ethical battle taking place in all their work.

Both men are legends to aspire to and without them there would be, for better or worse, no Joe Dylan.

Dylan tries to do the right thing again and again, but like Burroughs, is attracted or distracted by what they call the Ugly Spirit.

So happy birthday Joe, and thanks to Uncle Bill and Georges Prosper Remi otherwise known as Herge..

FREE BANGKOK NOIR FICTION

2016-04-20T02:59:00.001-07:00

Welcome to the twisted world of Joe Dylan and James Newman.

Here you will find news, reviews, interviews, and random screams at the moon.
Here you will find news, reviews, interviews, and random screams at the moon.
Enjoy.
Have fun.
James Newman
Bangkok 2016
...The Beat Goes On.

STOP PRESS.
New release date for Fun City Punch June 20th.
Cover to the right.

Take the Fun City safari, swallow the little pill and swim with the sharks.

But be careful of the Punch.

Some chancer may have spiked it.

Click the link below to download a FREE copy of Red Night Zone direct from Spanking Pulp Press and welcome to Fun City.

FREE RED NIGHT

Beware the Forbidden Fruit...Comedy and Cider....

2016-03-30T20:01:00.001-07:00

“What do you do for a living then?”

Pic: wwwmartinmor.com

ZZ Top’s crazed brother approaches the front line of spectators at the Magners Comedy Festival and points at the hapless squirming geezer next to me; the geezer says something about working for the UN. The bearded man is comedian Martin Mor, Northern Irish native, ex circus juggler and a mountain of a man who takes no prisoners at home or away. Mor elicits as many laughs from the crowd as he does fear, and it doesn’t matter if you’re working for the equality of human rights, peddling postcards on the streets of Bangkok or teaching English at an international school: he’ll cut you straight down to size if you’re, like me, sitting in the front row.

The Show has sold out, and as every school boy knows; as you know, as I know; and as Martin Mor knows, the last place you want to sit at a comedy gig, is in the front row.

We are at the front. We are the low-hanging fruit.

We’re the cannon fodder, the human shield; we’re the proverbial lambs to the slaughter; we’re the turkeys shaking in Bernard Matthew’s garden shed on a frosty December night.

“What do youse do for a living then?”

Mor points a savaloy-sized digit at a couple who are out for the night as friends. Martin predicts that the male has devious desires for his female friend and the blushing begins. Man. He’s ripping them apart, piece by bloody piece; not me, please, please, please, get on with the show; don’t choose me.

The first act is introduced.

Pic: ComedyCV

Intense, wax-mustached, friendly self-proclaimed potential Islamic terrorist (actually he’s a Columbian brought up in Windsor, UK) Matthew Giffen is almost bursting out of himself. Stance is important in this game, as is energy and Giffen, poised like a benevolent Doberman Pincher about to be freed from his lead, has both. If this lad had a tail he'd be wagging it. For a moment I wonder if there’s a reason Thailand don’t export energy beverage M150, but it’s just a fleeting thought as Giffens snarls merrily at the audience, keeping us all pleasantly in line throughout his set. Matthew is followed by local comic Aussie Matt Wharf who keeps the crowd amused with stories and gags of local interest and color; language difficulties, bar room blues and the third sex brandishing her concealed weapon.

Third on the bill is nothing short of a legend. Earl Okin hung out with the Beatles, recorded hit tunes for Twiggy. Earl Okin does musical comedy. I’m a big fan of musical comedy, my own formative music career, being, as anybody unfortunate enough to know will tell you, a bit of joke. Earl is also a ladies man, he uses his charm, talent and fine physical form to woe the entire female audience, and after his romantic web has been woven there’s not a dry seat nor eye, in the room.

Earl is show business, he’s the real deal, and he’s in Bangkok.

Pic: www.eaarloakin.com

The audience takes a break before Martin Mor returns to the stage and destroys my fellow front-rowers one by one. Now I understand, he’s waiting for me; he has something up his crafty circus sleeve for me, but instead he calls the Comedy Club manager and local lad Chris Wegoda to the stage.

Half Thai and half Londoner, one hundred percent showman, and collator of the event, Chris Wegoda takes the stage and delivers his routine questioning gender, race, and our preconceptions about life in the big bad mango. Following him, another local boy, lanky Irishman James Atkinson, rants about life in Bangkok and being tall in the land of the small.

Chris Wegoda and Drew McCreadie - Directors of the Comedy Club.

Headliner Lars Callieou has the audience in the palm of his hand for an extended top bill’s romp home. Pacing the stage purposefully and delivering the quips, the lines, the sly chat-ups, the confidence of his act, polished no doubt back in Canada where he hosts comedy shows, runs a club, and is a big hit on radio.

Most of the comics tonight are seasoned veterans of the scene, survivors of workingman’s clubs ball rooms, sweaty TV studios and pub back rooms. I’m impressed; all of the audience are impressed, and I’m reflecting on this when our big bearded friend returns to the stage and stares straight at me with menace.

Martin Mor smiles, he owns that stage, and he knows he’s let me off the hook on more than one occasion, so he makes a beeline to where I sit shakily at the front row.

He says it loud and clear. “So what do youse do for a living then?” he booms.

“I review comedy shows,” I squeak, nervously jostling, perhaps for invisibility, in my front row seat…

.....find out more about the Comedy Club Bangkok HERE

A Krom Review

2016-03-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

Mekong Delta Blues

Cambodia’s Krom always promise an exciting outing to the often dark and dangerous avenues of our hearts and souls, mixing up blues, country and folk with traditional Khmer vocals and harmonies. Christopher Minko’s band Krom have signed with USA Musik and Film label and management team delivering this their new album Mekong Delta Blues.

Photo: Johnathan Van smit

Krom are musician Christopher Minko and the two sisters Sophea and Sopheak Chamroeun on vocals plus Jimmy Baeck on slide guitar and Mao Sokleap on bass and keys and production duties. While they shock with songs such as Lil Suzie and Taliban Man they delight with tracks like Cambodia.

Classically trained musician Christopher Minko pilots his guitar through familiar terrain in the instrumental opener Take 2. A carefully layered track, fret-board gymnastics echo through effects units, it builds up, and finds its rhythm before disappearing, traceless but not forgotten, into the night.

Mama Blue is a blues jam with a Minko lead vocal, a woman with killer eyes is looking at us. A nice touch is the keys and the urgency to which the voice grows in fear of this woman’s gaze; tension builds, falls, and finally, Minko’s over it.

Mekong Delta Blues sees the sisters take the lead vocals as Minko plays a solid blues sequence. The Sisters Chamroeun, well known singers in Cambodia, graciously layer Khmer lyrics over a Western musical frame and this is where the band really hit, when the two cultures meet to create a unique hybrid, a musical genre that while slotting into the World Music genre is really Krom’s own bag.

Perhaps the strongest track on the album is Lil Suziea melodic meditation (“Good morning lil Suzie / Where did you go wrong?”) on disappointment and abandoned hope in a love hotel. Two versions of the track furnish the record. Christopher Minko takes lead vocal in one, Sophea on the other; both versions are haunting, disturbing, bleakly promising and solid examples of this thing they call Noir.

From the Heart is another Cambodia vocal lead, linguistic flurries rise and stab above and beyond a guitar phrase that could have been borrowed from Bert Jansch. Oftentimes it is too easy to compare Krom’s music with British folk but it is actually the source inspiration that is the same for the Australian Minko as it was for the British folk rock generation– American blues, arguably the source for most Western popular music today.

New Record.

Big City / Sin City sees Minko and Co take a wander through the big bad city, which one, we can’t be sure, perhaps all cities are all the same. Cities of the East are where human beings are abandoned, tortured, bought and sold, physically and emotionally hurt and killed; Krom’s music details this, studies it, puts a microscope to it and holds it up for all to see, whether we like it or not.

Cambodia, A love Songdesperately wants to be a pop song, that piano lick, those harmonies, that chorus; this ridiculously addictive song should be adopted by the Cambodian tourist board and made their flagship tune.
People should stand still in the street and sing it hand in hand.
But people often do things they shouldn’t do.

Prahok is a progressive instrumental, keys, bass, and guitar speaking as one during this restful pit stop before the disturbing Taliban Man. On first hearing the track the listener could be forgiven in finding the lyrics too heavy-handed but this is the way Minko captains his long-tail and those on board know the drill. Taliban Man assaults you, but, really, what did you expect?

Photo: Anya Minko

Shadow Falls is as close to country as Krom tend to swim. The waters are murky, the course unclear, “Where the Shadow falls / between the day and night / the dark and light.” There is a struggle here, conflicts in emotion and ethics, a battle between right and wrong. Decisions blurred by desire. This is a strong track with too many layers to attempt to unravel with much success other than to observe that a wound is being cut open here for our entertainment.

The record closes with an instrumental of the title track and we are all left wondering how Minko’s dark art has married with the perpetual brightness of the sisters; perhaps there is a fairy tale story here among the despair and the dust; maybe it is darkest before dawn.

Krom’s journey is only just beginning. Christopher Minko has the band and he has the songs. Time will tell if the rest of the world catches on to the musical buzz that has been steadily building in South East Asia over the past few years: with a record like Mekong Delta Blues Krom has every chance of spreading their message far and wide beyond the Mekong.

Mekong Delta Blues is released on MP3, CD and Vinyl by Musik and Film April 2^nd2016.

The album is for sale at Amazon as an MP3 HERE

Enquires: stephen@musikandfilm.com

The Beat Goes On

Room 303

2016-03-18T21:08:00.001-07:00

A writer checks into room 303. There he battles shadows and light, on a voyage into the further realms of noir.

A short film directed and shot by Hugh Gallagher, music by Von Von Von.

FUN CITY PUNCH is reaching completion...

Foreword to Fun City Punch.

2016-03-02T19:50:00.001-08:00

Fun City is made up of six major areas - The Beach, The Red Zone, The Central Business District, Metroland, Main Street and The Dark Side. These zones are all connected by alleyways and tunnels, a cryptic network of mazes not unlike the back lanes and alleyways that connected 18^th century London. These perilous passages are rebuilt as soon as they are demolished. Bars, riotous patrons, and the homeless exist both in spite of and because of this labyrinth of decadence. Widespread use of illicit substances, distribution of sexual diseases, prostitutes who help spread such diseases, murder rate, acceptance of corrupt officials, and the popularity of Fringe Theater. London had the Penny gaffs, Fun City has the bars, the cabaret shows, the boxing rings, the discos and the Theater Bizarre. One was never further than the toss of a dwarf away from a place where it was possible to enter a state of intoxication before discussing the impending apocalypse with a like-minded other.

This was before the clampdown.

By 2020 Fun City became an international hub for illegal activity and its global reputation as a serious business and tourism player was at risk.

Tourism was encouraged. Immigration discouraged.

Fun City needed a way to truly control her population.

The answer came with technology. First the surveillance system locally known as the Fun Eyes was installed. All main roads are now under surveillance. People came out at night to lessen the chances of being recognized by The Eye’s facial recognition software and quite soon the City became practically nocturnal.

In 2023 The Credit system was put in place.

Cash was removed and outlawed and instead the Fun City Credit Scheme, which deducted as well as credited the owner on account of both their behavior and their work, was introduced. Credits were awarded to the sufferers of conditions requiring medical attention, legislation that led to self-mutilations. Credits were awarded for artists and predictably every Fun City resident was writing a book or working on a play. Credits were deducted for promiscuous behavior, drink, drugs and violence.

Those who reached zero credits were subject to The Punch – an intense attitude adjustment four week program.

Crime escalated as cash vanished.

Art and suffering thrived hand in hand.

Fun City had entered her third and final act…

FUN CITY PUNCH IS OUT SOON IN EBOOK AND PAPERBACK WITH SPANKING PULP PRESS

List for 2015/16

2015-12-13T07:17:00.002-08:00

Asked recently what I have written and have out there in cyberspace I realized I need an updated list. So here it is. There may be some I've missed out but I think this more or less covers the last five or six years of struggling with sanity.

Thanks to all of you for reading, stay good, and best seasons greetings from here in sunny Bangkok...

SHORT STORIES

MEAT– September 2009- 69 Flavors of Paranoia
CARMEN– March 13th 2010– Freedom Fiction Anthology Vol: 1
KIM– April 2010– Scalped Magazine
RAVANA– February 2011 – Freedom fiction journal
CLEAR– March 2011– Freedom fiction Anthology Vol: 2
THAILAND AFTER DARK– Bangkok Book House– August 2011
TWO LUMPS AND A PAIR OF GLASSES- Big Pulp Magazine- March 2013
THE COLD SUN- March 2014- Twisted Tales
PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY- Exiles Anthology-2014- Blackwitch Press
THE FAST RATS- 2014- Strange Story Saturday
GHOST HIT - 2014 -Freedom Fiction
UNDEAD CARGO - 2014 - Spanking Pulp Press.

NOVELS

BANGKOK EXPRESS– August 2010- Bangkok Book House
THE BOY THAT PLAYED CHEQUERS- August 2011- Fried Fiction. Serial.
BANGKOK EXPRESS- Revised 2012 edition. Books Mango.
RED NIGHT ZONE- BANGKOK CITY- 2012 - Books Mango.
LIZARD CITY- 2012- Books Mango / Spanking Pulp
THE WHITE FLAMINGO- Spanking Pulp Press 2013
THE BLACK ROSE- Spanking Pulp 2014
ITCHY PARK- 2014- Double Dragon. Blood Moon Publishing.
FUN CITY - Work in progress.

NON FICTION

THAI MEDITATIONS (As James Alexander) – September 2010– Bangkok Book House

ANTHOLOGIES

TRIPLE WEIRD - Spanking Pulp Press
TRIPLE ZOMBIE - Spanking Pulp Press
EXILES - Black Witch Press
BIG PULP - Matter of Storage - Big Pulp Press
FREEDOM FICTION ANTHOLOGIES - Volumes 1 and 2

SCREENPLAYS

THE WHITE FLAMINGO (commissioned 2015)
FREAK MUSEAM (Spec script. Work in progress)

STAGE PLAYS

THE NATIVES (With Tom Earls 2013)

POETRY

INTO THE NIGHT (Amazon)

Here's a link to the Amazon author page. http://www.amazon.com/James-Newman/e/B004XFWCYU/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

And here's a link to the Goodreads Author page. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2253186.James_A_Newman

Extending best wishes into Christmas and the New Year!

James.

Skateboarding in London and Memories of a Vacuum Cleaning Kind.

2015-10-16T04:16:00.004-07:00

VAX was the king of the acid drop. A stunt performed by rolling your skateboard off a high ledge, keeping the board parallel with the street, and landing with ankle crushing glory on unforgiving concrete.

Does anyone acid drop anymore?

Seems so 1989 somehow.

The South Bank and Waterloo, where we smashed our trucks and wheels and chipped our decks as the homeless screamed and cursed and shouted at us through their mid-morning super-strength cardboard city deliriums.

Cold winds across the Thames, a sandwich at the Greek place where the owner challenged a gang of hoods who were robbing us of what we cherished most; our boards.

The Southbank where the city installed metal barriers blocking our terrain and in response we built a ramp from plywood liberated from a nearby building site thus defiantly grinded their metal barriers. Yes. The Southbank: The mecca of theatre, music, dance, the home of performance art.

That was our place: Southbank.

VAX earned his moniker through sponsorship with the vacuum cleaner manufacturers who mass-produced the almighty VAX cleaning machine. Some of us had sponsors from local skate shops, some were skating for Deathbox, the British board makers, but most of us were doing it because we needed the discipline of learning an art and our homes and schools were for the most part unwelcoming.

We never questioned why a domestic cleaning firm would sponsor a thirty-odd year old skateboarder. Why should we?

Rule number one?

Never question the street.

Watch VAX go.

The ledge, the height of a man’s head, above a flight of fifteen or so stairs at the Shell Centre Waterloo, VAX wearing his battered T-shirt bearing the logo of his sponsor, rolls, teeth gritted, reaches the edge, drops... Time stands motionless as he falls, knees bent slightly, eyes perfectly focussed, the sound of victory as his slime ball wheels hit the concrete and that beautiful whoosh of poetry in motion as he propels forward. Us unruly teenagers stop grinding our respective lips to clap and cheer “Go VAX! Yeah!”

The truth, as every unruly schoolboy knows, is that the acid drop is the first trick any skate kid learns, it is as easy as falling off a log, or rolling off a kerb. Any fool can do it. A brutishly simple trick, moreover a waste of a good ledge potentially decorated with the skill of an ollie impossible, the verve of a flip, or indeed the arrogance of a melancholy mute grab; the tricks we were mastering were complex.

So why cheer VAX?

Perhaps VAX didn’t pose a threat to us? Maybe VAX would never be in the pages of R.A.D or Skateboarding, were we humouring an older man living out some deluded dream? Were we taunting him?

No it wasn’t that.

The trick that we were applauding was not the acid drop it was VAX’s life choice. VAX, the same age as many of our fathers, had made a decision not to conform, not to be one of suit wearing dudes who looked down on us as they lost their hair in upmarket bistros choking down watercress salad and studying the Financial Times.

VAX was never going to be one of those guys, he was cut from different cloth. VAX knew that the City would one day fall. VAX was living the life he wanted to live.

VAX took chances, snaked around the streets, made his own agenda.

Years later I'd got the suit and tie job and the house in the suburbs, slumped on the sofa watching some brain numbing crap there's a knock at the door. Some old fool selling cleaning equipment door to door.

After closing the door a thought occurred.

No it couldn't be.

Could it?

I opened the front door a crack and took another look...

A traveling salesman skated away...

The Beat Goes On