#1 Blood Simple. Dead In The Heart Of Texas

This being my first, fully fleshed movie review (besides the one for Watchmen that I video-taped for the Rotten Tomatoes Show that was almost aired on national television, and almost won me $100, but that they ultimately couldn't use because I taped and uploaded it in Thailand...and that I'm still bitter about), I wanted to run with the theme of 'firsts' and go with the first film from two of my, and now everyone's favorite filmmakers, the brothers Coen.

Blood Simple is old-school film noir spread unevenly over Texas toast with more than a few dollops of grisly, unflinching, comedic murder. It's a pathetic podunk love triangle gone rotten that only the Coens could make you care about. Fresh out of film school, the brothers brought every technique and trick they had learned to the table, and executed them with the taut precision of a Hollywood vet.

The title does not lend itself to the lack of a complex story, but is instead based on a phrase from the 'Dashiel Hammet' (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man) novel Red Harvest, in which "blood simple" is a term coined to describe the addled, fearful mindset people are in after a prolonged immersion in violent situations, and buddy, there is plenty of violent situation immersion in this here flick. The film stars John Getz (best known as Christina Applegate's scumbag co-worker in Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead) as Ray, a bartender who falls in love with Abby (Frances McDormand, in her feature film debut), who happens to be married to his boss, Marty (played by Dan Hedaya, better known as the dad in Clueless). Abby reciprocates Ray's affections when he helps her dip town and Marty's clutches, which leads Marty to hire P.I. Loren Visser (played by a diabolically sleazy M. Emmet Walsh , who would've stolen the show had it not been for Fran McDormand's adorable Texas twang), to kill the back-stabbing lovebirds.

In addition to the tangled narrative that is anything but simple, the film is filled with distinct, visual originality, and money-shots a film-school art-house maven might write a thesis about, but that the Coens use with the ease of a close-up: a tense conversation between Ray and Abbey halfway through the film is broken up with succinct and slow-motion suspense of a mere newspaper tossed at the screen door they're standing behind; a scene involving a dark stretch of highway, a stubborn corpse and a shovel, that no doubt inspired a much similar incident in Fargo; Visser, first shooting, then punching through a wall with his left hand, to pry loose the knife stuck in his right hand; the erratic manual track-and-zoom shot that Joel Coen picked up from his buddy Sam Raimi, after working as an editor on Evil Dead; and the funniest use of a cul-de-sac before The Burbs, all make for the most entertaining "art" film I've ever seen. If you've never seen it, or haven't in a long while like me, you have to queue this shit up. 5 out of 5.

Koh Tao, Part VI: Bloody Pancakes

After my encounter with the canine crew, I had a pretty embarrassing spill on the scooter. I had just finished having a beer at a bar that provided an amazing view of a small cove. The place was literally at the end of the only road on the island, so there were very few travellers hanging about, mostly huts and their residents, which I was happy about, for I have no qualms about embarrassing myself in front of Thais, that's what I'm here for. Anyhow, I had just mounted my scooter and pulled out my camera to show you, Merica, a pleasant ride through the Koh Tao countryside, and as I began to accelerate, I noticed a couple of Thai kids on a scooter of their own about to pull in front of an oncoming truck. What ensued was nothing short of hilarious for the handful of Thai's that got to witness a tall goofy farang eat dirt road after valiantly, however unnecessarily, trying to save two kids who it turned out were actually driving up to meet the truck that I thought hastened their doom. I have footage of this crash, but it's stuck on my laptop which has been out of commission since December, so hopefully I can rescue it once I return Stateside.



When I got back to Ban's, I hooked up Yair, Laura and Amy and we took a stroll down the tree-shaded avenue that skirted the beach for miles, taking in the sights and smells. We passed several seafood joints with everything on that day's menu lavishly displayed on tables outside each restaurant; squid and octopus, snapper and shark and the like. After eating some savory shrimp and snapper kabobs and catching some of the World Series, we headed back to Ban's but agreed to say hello to a friend of ours and grab some dessert. Our friend was a little Burmese dude named Get, and he served some of the most delicious pancakes, of all different flavors, from his little cart, one of dozens that dotted the avenue.

As we chatted with Get and watched him cook and flip his little fruity delights, a truck full of very serious Thai dudes looking very much like the canine killers I saw earlier, rolled past behind us. Get immediately stopped talking and started looking extremely nervous. I asked him what was wrong and he uttered one word, "Police." He kept craning his neck in the direction the police had driven, and became very distracted from his pancake making. I began to assume that Get was not operating his pancake stand within the confines of the law. A few more minutes went by, when all of a sudden Get dropped his spatula and disappeared behind the house we were standing in front of, Laura's pancake still bubbling on the grill. Then from behind us a fist of surly "cops" punched their way through the small group of Get's customers in pursuit of Get. We soon heard shouting and scuffling coming from behind the house, and the cacophony soon turned very unsettling and down-right stomach-turning. I looked at my companions and their faces shared the same look of disbelief that I was feeling. In the middle of this Burmese beat down, one of the cops casually strolled out from the grisly scene and headed for the pancake cart. Without so much as a glance at the onlookers, the cop grabbed all of the cash in Get's money jar, pocketed it, scraped the now burning pancake off the griddle, set it on a plate, and walked off with a smile on his face and pancake in his mouth. I could not believe what had just transpired, but fearing the Thai police more than any force of curiosity or gallantry, I wisely decided not to get involved. I mean, seriously, what could I or any of my friends do anyway? For all we knew, Get was drug-dealing rapist without a green card, but the guy seemed pretty friendly and carefree the several times we bought pancakes from him, often chatting about how much he missed his family back home. We stood there for another minute or so, still in shock, the only words spoken were along the lines of, "What the fuck?", and then, with reluctant American indifference, I walked away and finished my pancake.

Koh Tao, Part V: The Island's Canine Problem

Wow, been a long time. Seems like all of Surat Thani has the swine flu paranoia bug, so I got a six day weekend...time to catch up on this here sclog, if you're still reading that is...



On the Tuesday, another 6:ish wake up call from roosters, buffalo coitus, and Three Billy Goats Gruff: The Musical. I got out of bed and hit my head on the bathroom doorway a few times (I'm way too tall for this country), enhancing the already maddening array of hangover stars and colors cascading from my brain. After washing up, I headed down to the beach for breakfast and more scuba fun. It was pouring down rain, so we took a vote and dove in the rain. We had an uneventful dive (if you call a teeming coral feast for the eyes uneventful), but the dive-squadron was a little more tight-knit this time round, what after being responsible for each others lives on two occasions already, and there was of course the seven birthday fuck-buckets we all enjoyed together. So we all had a little more fun going through our bullshit little scuba maneuvers. (Fuck-buckets are Thai whiskey (which is actually rum, but everyone calls it whiskey), coke and redbull tossed into a bucket. The drink of choice for deuchebaggery)


We got back to the beach and decided to do our last two dives the next day, giving us the rest of the afternoon to relax, finally giving me a chance to rent my first scooter (ever!) and explore the island. Koh Tao's a small island, and I covered its expanse in less than an hour. It was a roly-poly little sea-mountain covered with goat farms and coconut groves, and dirt roads to nowhere in particular. It was on this little day-trip that I had the privilege of witnessing Koh Tao's finest and their methods of canine control in action. Just like every other part of Thailand, Koh Tao is crawling with dogs. But this being a resort island, mangy dogs are an unwelcome part of the scenery.


I was riding my motor-bike along a hilly stretch of road, when all of a sudden a pick-up full of Thai rough-necks and covered in mud pulled up along side of me. There were about six or seven of them piled in the bed, and a couple were brandishing pistols. These bruisers looked like they had just left a tea-party with some Malaysian guerrillas. They gave me some not-so-charming smiles, then suddenly their truck veered off the road at a clip and headed for some bungalows scattered over a field. I slowed down curiously, and noticed a pack of dogs about a hundred yards away, fighting and snarling around the small huts. The truck headed right for them. When they saw the truck careening its way towards them, the dogs immediately scattered, as if they knew what was about to ensue. I actually thought the men would whip out their pistols and start firing, but what they did was even worse/better/more bizarre? I don't know the right word for what I saw. One of the men hoisted a long length of pvc pipe up to his mouth and aimed it at a handful of dogs headed for the trees. One of the dogs let out a yelp, stumbled and continued into the trees. At this point I was stopped on the side of the road. The man with the pvc pipe leaped out of the truck and ran into the bush where the dogs had disappeared. He came back out a minute later carrying the limp body of the dog he had just shot with his plastic blowgun. I shit you not. One of the dudes in the cab of the truck yelled something at the man carrying the dog, who then turned around and threw the body back into the scrub. Something else was yelled at him, after which he fetched the body a second time and took it deeper into the woods, presumably so that the decomposition stench wouldn't reach the nearby bungalows. I had just witnessed Koh Tao's canine control unit in full force.

Hot Mushroomy Mess

As you know, I was in quite a state last night, and due to the influx of respectable types who think it's funny to start a facebook profile, I'll have to tell you about it hear in ScaughtyThoughts. This state I speak of saw me at incredible highs, where every thought was one of awesomeness, and many times I picked up the phone to call each and every one of you to share that awesomeness, if only I could have figured out which one of the 13 fingers I sprouted was real enough to use the phone. Last night also had its lows, getting caught dancing naked to Fela Kuti in a gazebo being one of them. Yes, it was magic mushroom time again in Koh Phangnan.

Now I sit in the hazy after-birth of that psychedelic jaunt, gazing out at the Gulf of Thailand. It's rainy season and the sky is patched with grey and bedraggled, like the hair of an aging musician, but my surroundings are no less a paradise. I'm sitting on the porch of Big Blue resort, blogging and checking the stats of my fantasy baseball team on a stranger's computer, and eating quite simply one of the most delicious dishes to ever grace my palate: crunchy, spicy somtum with a gang of panang curry to help sweat out all the mushroomy miscreants flowing through my life-stream. How was your weekend?

Koh Tao, Part IV: Birthday

That first night's sleep was pretty fitful. On top of the first day jitters, and still trying to get over the fact that I was about to scuba dive in fucking Thailand, it seemed also that I was not the only one inhabiting my room. The walls and ceilings came alive at night with shadowy movement; dark forms that could have been centipedes, scorpions, or whatever unseemly creepy crawly creature my mind could conjure. Having been in Thailand for quite some time now, I'm convinced they were most certainly geckos, but dammit if it wasn't unnerving. My room was also conveniently located next to the hotel generator, which made noises at night like water buffalo hate-sex. And just beyond that mechanical nightmare was a rooster/goat farm; the loudest, smelliest combination of livestock the agricultural gods could come up with. And when I was able to shut my eyes for half an anxious second, there were the skeet hordes waiting to sup on my tenderness. So sleep was fitful. In spite of my slumber-less night, I was raring to go come morning.

I'm not going to bore you with the minute details of every inch of reef or the color of stripes on every fish we saw, and certainly not with the humdrum of that first day of training in the pool, because I believe that a majority of you are certified divers and have been scuba-diving before; at the least snorkeling. For those of you who haven't, let it suffice to say that it's just as goddamn exciting as I'm sure you've imagined. Scuba-diving is an exhilarating balance between adapting, reacting and adjusting the life-supporting equipment strapped to your back, and taking in the amazing alien world around you that takes advantage of every opportunity to make your dive a permanent slumber-party with Davey Jones.

That second day on the island, a Sunday, I think we spent something like four hours in the pool, just getting used to the process of strapping, buckling, checking, wearing, swimming, and breathing all the gear. After that, it was our first lecture in the class-room; another two or three hours, I think. Lecture was boring, but broken up with several verbal jabs about my new Gestapo hair-cut. That night we all had dinner at Ban's restaurant, and got to know each other a little better. Our dive instructor, Alex, joined us, and I guess I should talk about him a little, being our instructor and all. Alex was from Germany; Bavaria, I think. He's in his mid-thirties, and has been living and diving in Koh Tao for several years. He looked like an amalgamation of David Hasselhoff and Chunk. Kinda of a douche, but he seemed to know what he was talking about scuba-wise.

We had some good conversation, the seven of us, some food and drink, then headed down the beach for one of those nightly fire-twirlings to the cadence of Kanye and Flo-rida. We played some pool, got a tad schwilly, and headed home early. Everyone seemed to get along and enjoy each other's company.

Monday was my birthday, and the first day we went to open water, so perfectly timed on my part. Pineapple smoothies for breakfast, then we picked up the gear a little before eight in the morning. A long-tail boat took us out to the two-story dive-boat which took us about five klicks around the NE coast. We were only a quarter-mile off shore when we got in the water. We descended the 12 meters (these numbers need to be checked in my dive book) to bottom, formed a circle in the sand, and took it all in. The visibility wasn't the greatest, I'd say about 15-20 meters (maybe because it was still rainy season), but that 20 meters wasn't short on things to look at. Everyone made it through the skills tests with no problems, we swam a figure-eight and surfaced. About 50 minutes underwater give or take. No incidents or accidents, hints or allegations. After a short debriefing on the boat, we headed back to Ban's for a few hours before our afternoon dive. The later dive was more of the same. A few skills tests, a short swim-about, then back to Ban's.

There had been little mention all day of it being my birthday except for a couple of well-wishes that morning from Amy and Laura and Yair, but that was fine with me. I had just met these people, and we were all scuba-diving which overshadows a lame 29th birthday. Which made it all the more awesome when I headed off to bed only to make it five steps before everyone started singing "Happy Birthday" at the bar as they brought in a candle-lit brownie from 7-11, the entirety of which you can see in my mouth in some picture floating around the cyberspace. Pretty damn pleasant ending to a damn awesome day.

Koh Tao, Part III: Dive Buddies and a Ladyboy Chop-Shop

There were four others in my dive-class, and we were all from different parts of the world. Yair was from Israel, there was Sasha from Germany, Amy from England, and Laura from Switzerland.

Yair, a tall, gangly Jew was about 28, still at university and still serving the army. He didn't know it at the time, but his country was about to go to war, not that they haven't been at war since their birth as a nation. He was soon to be a busy man once he returned in November. He was certainly the most covivial of the dive squadron, not including myself, of course. Yair's a very intelligent guy, though quite self-concious when it came to his accent, which was funny because there were more Israelis on Koh Tao than there were English speakers, or Thais for that matter. That tiny island was a haven for Hebrews, for some strange reason. I spent most of my time, when not alone, with Yair over those six days on the island. Great conversationalist, if a little boisterous of his sexual escapades in Bangkok, and he was always up for some late-night billiards.

Sasha was in Thailand with his girlfriend, who was already certified and diving with another group. I can't remember her name at the moment, but she would join us on later dives and debauchery. Sasha was my usual dive-partner; we helped each other suit up, and were usually side-by-side underwater. Sasha and his lady were both very nice people, but I didn't spend too much time with them. Sasha was the first to see the whaleshark.

Amy from England. Amy was a blonde Mary Poppins, a sorority girl and a fuck-bucket rolled into one British burrito, and no I'm not being vulgar in my analogy of Amy. The fuck bucket is the drink of choice to all hedonists in Thailand, which is an overwhelming majority of the foreign population. It's Sangsom Thai rum, Caribou which is Thai redbull, and Coke, all tossed into a bucket. Fuck buckets play an integral part in my Koh Tao adventure. And Amy liked to drink them. But anyhow, Amy was a ray of British sunshine, which has got to be pretty rare. She always put a smile on our faces whether we were in the middle of a boring-ass lecture, or at the bottom of the sea.

And then there was Laura Heutschi. The Miss of the Swiss. Laura was an lovely little lady from Switzerland who had regulators busting valves all over the ocean floor. She made checking tank-straps and the pressure gauge an enjoyable experience. And she gets adorably nervous when she takes tests.

I met these four lovely people in the classroom on the second floor of Ban's Dive Shop while we were giving our divemaster all of our vital information, and signing a bunch of papers saying it was not Thailand's fault if one of us fucked up and got the bends out there in the deep, after which we watched a worthless video on how not to scuba-dive, the whole while sizing each other up.

After our two-hour introduction course, I took a nice long walk along the rocky forested shore-line in the balmy evening. I passed a lady-boy who had a little hair-cut hut set up on the beach, and decided to get my first Thai hair-cut, which was a normal Scott haircut but with about an inch and a half of bare scalp over both ears. I walked back to Ban's, embarrassed and ashamed of my new KMFDM look (ashamed because I think I unwittingly agreed to it, and didn't put a stop to it fast enough, but that ladyboy was fucking intimidating), looking like a German industrial-techno fan, choking down the bitter pill of absolutley no chance of getting what I ought to get on my birthday in the land of thighs.

Surat Sunday

I love my scooter. And now that I've got my picnic backpack full of sammies and herb and massaman and ice cold beer and my little boombox and some good readin and a crossword, I'm gonna hop on that scooter and cross the river and just head north to the hills through the rubber tree groves til I run out of gas. Hope your Sunday is happy like mine.