Class war, same as before

It's class war, same as before. The neoliberal consensus insists it doesn't exist, but I don't think so. And don't forget, the poorer I get the more socialist I get, so I'm not decided yet. And I like SuperSport too much to give up the crutch of privilege and entitlement that keeps me up above the people who talk to each other.

The people not anaesthetized by J.Lo cameltoe and how fat she look now she pregnant and did she use a surrogate and I'm talkin' shit but you know who I meant... And if there's anyone who doesn't maybe they weren't educated and trained for 20 years of their days to consider considerations of celebrity vacations and glam swag Facebook statuses and who Heyneke Meyer got at eight for Four Nations.

They put us to bed. Got us sleeping through double history. I'm rocking these cool sneakers coz I saw them in a magazine and I like to read magazines coz I see them on TV and I like to watch TV coz I saw it on the internet and I like to surf the internet coz I saw it on the internet and I like to surf the internet coz I saw it on the internet and I like to surf the internet coz I saw it on the internet...

They put us to bed, man! Fashion, sport, news, celebrity, all that stuff on DStv... It's like a lullabye. Like a ritalin remedy for your critical faculties. Entertainment, action... It's all just a distraction. From reality. To put us to sleep!

They got us sleeping through history. But Govan Mbeki said that history's on the side of the people. Now we just gotta decide... Is that us?

Coz it's class war. Same as before. The neoliberal consensus insists it doesn't exist. But I don't think so.

The night Cliffie went home and never told Jayce

 Jason carried a gun for a while back in the Nineties. When it was the fashion.

            They’ve gone out of vogue now, but in the days when the clubs were rocking in Rosebank, handguns were huge.

            There used to be plastic drums of building sand outside every nightclub so that the owners of firearms could safely unload their weapons without shooting some poor doorman in the foot. Then they’d hand their weapons in to be stored in the gun safe and in return they’d be given a token that they could leave peeking out of their shirt pocket where everybody could see it and know that they were a bad-ass gun owner.

            It was ugly days. Rosebank was overrun with cocaine and hijackers and, ay, maybe it made sense to carry a gun.

            But not Jason.

            That oke should never have been allowed out of the house, let alone armed and dangerous. In those days he was just taking too many drugs for too many nights in a row to be trusted with any kind of weapon.

            But some official somewhere clearly wasn’t concentrating the day Jayce came to apply for his gun licence. And we were his mates, we clearly weren’t on top of our game either, because we really should have put our foot down.

            The guy could barely string a sentence together, let alone hold down a job. He was living in his mom’s garden flat, he was eating pills like they were Tic-Tacs…

            Jayce was a mess. But so were we, so we didn’t spot it until it was a bit too late.

            It all came to a head that night at Therapy.

            Now to understand Jayce, you must realise that he’s a bit gay. Well, he probably is totally gay. Fact is, I’ve never seen him with a girlfriend.

            But Jayce doesn’t know he’s gay. In fact he’s about the biggest homophobe you’ve ever checked. But he still liked to jol at Therapy, which was like the biggest gay club in Rosebank in those days.

            In those days we used to hang out with this oke called Cliffie. A skinny little oke who could never handle his dop and used to keep passing out in the oddest places. Jayce was lank protective of the oke. I know, I know. It was all a bit gay.

            So the one night we’re all having a fat jol at Therapy – the place is full of gay okes – and Cliffie decides he’s finished jolling so he goes home. But he forgets to tell Jason.

            By that stage Jayce is completely shunted on pills and Red Bull and vodkas. And somehow he gets it into his head that Cliffie has passed out and some gay guy has dragged him off to have his way with him.

            This is what’s going on in Jayce’s crazy mind. We’re just jolling, completely oblivious.

            Next thing we know, Jason has gone and checked his gun out of the gun safe and come charging back into the club. He makes directly for the toilets with his gun drawn like he’s James Bond.

            He starts kicking in the doors of the stalls and waving his gun around at the poor okes inside, screaming, “Where’s Cliffie? Where’s Cliffie?”

            The three of us come charging in there after him, lank shocked and screaming just as loud, “Cliffie’s gone home! Cliffie’s gone home!”

            I saw a couple of terrified dudes cowering in the one cubicle, looking at one another, as if to ask, “Your name’s not Cliffie, is it?”

            Jason, was like, “He’s gone home? Oh. Okay.”

Then he put his gun in his pocket and walked out, just as about six bouncers came charging into the toilets looking for him.

            So that was it. After that night we banned Jason from owning a gun. We made him hand it over to his mom and the oke was no longer to be seen necking pills with a handgun token peeking out of his shirt pocket.

            And almost at the same time, crime began to decrease and those sand drums disappeared from outside the clubs.

            People started taking less drugs, or at least they took drugs less openly and things became a lot more relaxed in Jo’burg.

            You don’t check okes running around with guns as much as you did back in the Nineties.

Yiss. You used to check some mal stuff back then, hey.

            

Poetry: They must be ambushed

Times are tough for a wannabe poet in the big city. Self expression is rewarding in itself, but having an audience is even better. Knowing you have an audience and seeing them react to your poetic meanderings is best of all.

So most word warriors will sooner or later find themselves dabbling in live performance. But the poetry scene in Johannesburg is hard to pin down. Short-lived open-mic, spoken-word sessions spring up, then disappear after a few months.

Book shops and literary-inclined coffee-shops host recitals for published authors, but otherwise, the ambitious wordsmith must find ways, spaces and performance opportunities himself.

A cunning way of finding new audiences is to disguise the very fact that you are producing poetry. With its image of militant hectoring or else fey romanticism, poetry is sometimes misconstrued and few non-adherents would willingly attend a poetry show.

So they must be ambushed.

Poems are versatile, adaptable, malleable things. They lend themselves to the fusion of forms. Poems can be set to music, video, stills images, performance art, dance and other types of artistic expression. Music is the most willing pairing, sharing a sense of rhythm and certain conventions of presentation.

So you tell people to come watch a gig, a music show, you're jamming a few tunes at this place. You should come have a listen. And then you drop those poems on them. Either accompanied or not. A capella, recited or performed. Audiences are willing to excuse the most unadorned poetic indulgence if it's seen as a brief excursion from – or an aspect of – the music. In the name of show dynamics, say. Meanwhile, the poetry might be the main attraction, the essence.

In this tradition, three undercover poets are currently putting out some clandestine metred material in a series of musically packaged shows around Joburg. These are David Chislett, Jon-Pat Myers and your correspondent Hagen Engler aka Inspektor Ras.

The next instalment of this roadshow takes place on February 28 at The Bohemian, a Joburg venue with a rich rock history and "the third oldest existing pub in Joburg".

The show is billed as "Acoustic Rock Night", but don't believe a word. These are stinking poets, with guitars as camouflage.

Dave Chislett recently published his first book of poetry For You Or Someone Like You, following on from several other prose print endeavours. Jon-Pat Myers was frontman for Joburg punk legends Toxic Sox and currently fronts psychobilly act The Psycotix. He's a sculptor and a poet, though he would strenuously deny the latter.

None of these three gents would qualify for student discount at H2O. But this has done their lyrical output no harm whatsoever.

Find the more show details here, or read the following paragraph:



Thursday 28 February
8pm
The Bohemian
Cnr. Park and Menton roads
Richmond
Cover: R40

Grannies, gun-bongs and a gate remote in your ass!

Through the throng, we can just make out the door opening, and two older ladies come wobbling out of the door to the Puma Social Club.

            In fedoras and that short, blond hairdo that you get. A little shambly, but loving it like they don’t get out much.

            Then comes the chirp of the night.

            “No! I didn’t stand in line for two hours to see two grannies come out of the club!”

            Ha! LOLs to the fkn max and true that. But the fact is, the ninja with the one-liners probably stood in line closer to three hours to get into tonight’s party.

            Mercifully there aren’t too many grannies in there.

            This is how the non-VIPs experience the Puma Social Club. Inching along a pavement in De Korte street in a crushing hell-scrum of humanity. I arrived at 7.45pm and got in at 10.39. By that stage I was so psychologically broken, I was actually disappointed. I’d been hoping to crack the full three hours.

            But bouncer dude must’ve liked my polite groove and he ushered me in with six or seven others.

  

Watch me take down ALL these trees!

“BA-THWACK! Krrrrr! Eeeeeeeeee!”

            Now when you hear that and you’re merrily typing away at your home-office blogging desk, you go investigate. Barefoot, in your tracksuit pants coz you’re a blogger, but you go have a look.

            What you find, in the middle of Linden Street at 4pm rush hour, is a lo-bed truck with a massive, yellow road grader on the back that’s just driven into a solid branch of an overhanging tree.

            The four-metre tree limb, which is as thick as my thigh, has broken off and is entwined between the cabin and the chrome cylinders of the hydraulic pistons that work the blade. The one piston is bent, a snapped pipe is spewing hydraulic oil all over the road, and the traffic is backed up all the way to Grayston Drive.

            I’ve brought my phone and I quickly shoot a couple of pics – as evidence of I’m not quite sure what yet. There are branches all over the road, leaves and twigs like a tree has blown up, oil squirting all over the place, this twisted piston that looks like a beast of a repair… And in the middle of it all, these two guys in overalls trying to deal with it.

            They’re up on the lo-bed wrestling with this tree limb, trying to pull it off the truck. And you can tell that all this debris is going to have to go somewhere, and I’m keen to make sure it doesn’t go in our driveway.

            But these guys don’t speak English, and besides, there is such a firing in the post for the two of them. I simply don’t have the guts to get all “not in my back yard” on them. Not now, when they’re watching their careers flash before their eyes.

            Why did they choose Linden, though, when Grayston would’ve been so much easier? No trees on that route. Probably seemed like a short cut at the time.

            Anyway, I leave them to it. I’ve got a five o’clock meeting to get to.

            By the time I get out of the complex, the truck and the grader are nowhere to be seen. I turn left onto Linden towards Rosebank. There are overhanging trees the whole way down that road and at each tree, roughly every twenty metres, there’s a gaping hole in the canopy, like someone drove a large square thing, roughly the shape of the left side of a road grader, through the biggest urban forest in the southern hemisphere.

            Just big, square bites taken out of the foliage, a couple more limbs to dodge, some branches half-severed, still hanging from the trees. Leaves everywhere, like confetti at a forest nymphs’ wedding.

            No sign of the truck besides a tell-tale trail of hydraulic oil.

            You can just imagine that driver sommer plunging the lo-bed into fourth and flooring it. Thinking, “Bro, we are so fired when we get to the site with this mess. Let’s just get there and get it over with. And if I take half the trees in Sandton down with me on the way there, I couldn’t care.”

            “Watch this!”

Some musical mellowness in Sandton. Just a taste.

If you're based in Sandton, Johannesburg, the commercial centre of the African continent, Bohemian self-expression is seldom on the menu.

For artsy escapism and self-expression, you might try karaoke night at the Colony Arms, or some random stand-up at a place like Metro. But since the demise of the Blues Room, a proper live performance venues have been like hen's teeth in Sandton Central.


So to discover that a neglected back room of your local pub has been turned into a performance venue is a lot like finding a forgotten Christmas present behind the bookcase in March.

This crew of sound specialists has launched an events arm called Swamp Events, and The Library at The Brazen Head is their flagship venue.

This was a welcome surprise, not least because yours truly is a veteran of the capricious Joburg open-mic scene. We've "graced" stages from the old Bassline to Cool Runnings to House of Nsako and Pata-Pata just now, but this is a nice one close to home.

With their sound and video expertise, Swamp deliver a rare standard of sonic excellence, and every performance is filmed, and available for purchase. And lo and behold, The Library at The Brazen Head delivers a cosy ambience previously unfathomable in the capitalist heartland.

That vid up the top is a clip of this week's performances. Look out for Inspector Ras on voice and guitar in the beginning there...

They will be hosting proper shows by the likes of Josie Field too, some comedy nights, and posting info on their Facebook page over here. And of course, if the artsiness clashes with your Sandton sensibilities, you can always pop next door to the main pub and catch the end of the cricket. We only played kak that night, though, hey. Yussis.

Comrade Baby: Latest book by Hagen Engler

"It's like Justice Malala being married to Joe Slovo, except one of us is a white liberal"

Marrying Black Girls for Guys who aren't Black, The Colour of One, and other learnings on the path from white privilege to the Benoni taxi rank. Hagen Engler gains perspective on blackness, whiteness, drunkness, punkness, the Eastern Cape, Robot Guys and the resilience of his cushion-sized liver, as South Africa evolves from a gnomes's lair to a proper country with equal rights and opportunities for all-time cock-ups, poetry, depravity and hedonistic benders like you've never seen.

A book of columns for Sunday Times, Mahala, Weekend Post, That's How It Is and elsewhere, mixed in with poems, rhymes and lyrics brought on by Comrade Baby and the South African condition.

For a sample of what's inside, check here and here, or even here.

The book is Hagen Engler's sixth. It is, always an independent Pocket Assegai Publication and a document of a decade of South African-ness. It makes a sweet gift for any South Africans in touch with their own ridiculousness and who aren't afraid of a little bit of swearing.

"...a side-splitting adventure through the not always politically correct landscape of South Africa." – Noeleen Maholwana-Sangqu, 3Talk

"...a compelling pastiche of South African craziness that somehow, magically, passes as a survival guide to travel, multiracial dating and other South African adventures." – The Daily Maverick

"Hagen Engler is one of South Africa's most under-recognised great writers. Obervant, witty, sacriligeous, and highly original... " – True Love

Curious? Try these blog posts!
Marrying Black Girls For Guys Who Aren't Black
Things I Learnt About White Guys By Marrying A Black Girl
Buying Umbhaco For Baby
White Boy Things
Comrade Baby And The Gateway To Hell
10 Reasons Cape Town Can Fuck Off

Buy Comrade Baby!

Purchase your piece of authentic contemporary South Africana for R150 by mailing hagen@hagenshouse.com. Comrade Baby is also available from Kalahari.com.

'Firstly, I'm a big fan of your work...'

I must be the worst journalist ever. Especially interviews. When I interview someone, I give them the most sweetheart questions you can imagine. It’s like I’m the ZBC interviewing Bob Mugabe.

Bands, property developers, beautiful women, men who picked up 28 bricks in one go… I just can’t bring myself to give them the third degree.

Part of it’s because I like to see the good in people. The other thing is that sometimes these people are famous, and you’re a fan. So you end up starting your interview with AKA going, “Dog! That Jealousy joint is the bidniz, yo!” And it doesn’t get particularly probing after that.

Here are my digits...

At first I was 3.1. Kilograms at birth. Birth number 220 of 1973 according to the department of the interior. That’s what the birth certificate tells me – C242325, issued free in respect of persons born on or after 1/1/1960.

            In doing so I became 7301195043006, though this would only become clear later. In the meantime I became one of the 21 members of Sub A1 that Mrs Bruwer launched on our respective trajectories through academia. By the time I was in 5F I weighed 28. Our number at number 22 was 321873.

            I got over 80 all through primary school. Then I turned 13 and I was into 6B. By then we’d moved to the area, so our number was 522689. I got a couple of 80s, and in the meantime I made 13As. Played number 9 when we beat Grey Bloem 8-4 in 1986.

Rodriguez, me and my Man Card

 I’m becoming a bit of a sissy these days.

            Look, I’m still a muscled beast of a guy, with a very valid Man Card. I have arms like shipping cables, voice like a bass bin, testosterone oozing out of me like salmonella from a bag of defrosting prawns… I’m just, I’m a bit sentimental.

            It started with that bloody Clint Eastwood and his Invictus movie about the 95 Rugby World Cup. God, I didn’t even cry when we won the actual World Cup, but somehow, watching the movie had me battling.

            There I was in the back of Cinema Nouveau, nose running like a tap, eyes damp as squibs, trying not to sob audibly as the Bok vories pushed for their lives in the last seconds of the final.

            It was all I could do to not sob audibly and alarm the granny in the purple cardigan next to me. It took me by surprise, that flick. I wasn’t expecting it to be so poignant.

            But then it happened again. Someone sent me a link to this web video about a kid who builds his own games arcade out of cardboard boxes. That thing broke me. I could barely post it on my blog through the sploshes of tears on my keyboard.

            The innocent idealism! Initiative! The triumph over adversity! Caine’s Arcade, man. If you come out of YouTubing that with dry eyes, you’re probably an axe murderer.

            Then the real world started getting to me. I saw a lightie helping his little sister onto her trike, and I got all poignant. I twisted my ankle on some stairs and had a little breakdown, with the cleaning lady patting me on the back.  “Shame, sorry bhuti. You must be careful.”

            Then Europe won the Ryder Cup. I got all misty eyed. The one lady died in Downton Abbey. Tears. Lions lose to Province. Tjanking like a Maltese with merthiolate on its bum.

            I was a mess.

            To avoid public embarrassment, I had to pinpoint the exact things that make me get emotional. This is what I came up with: children, old people, nostalgia, emotive music, sport, bleak weather, South Africa, really well prepared food, SAB beer ads and intense pain.

            So, to avoid having another sob fest, the thing for me would actually be spending every day in the municipal library. With evenings on the China TV channel.

            You’ve got to man up, though. You can’t hide away from life. And a man with shipping-cable biceps should be able to suppress his emotions for your basic poignant moments, saving them for traditional SA men’s emotional times like a screaming match with your lady in the road behind Kitcheners.

            So back into the breach. I thought I’d take myself off to watch that Searching For Sugarman movie. There’d been good reviews, I dig Rodriguez’s music, and I even met him that time he beat me at pool at the old Up The Khyber in PE.

            Should be interesting, I thought.

Boy, did I choose the wrong movie to be manly at. Searching For Sugarman features an old person, his children, nostalgia, SA, emotive music, some beer, emotional pain, and the bleakest weather this side of the Siberian tundra.

This dude was a superstar in SA, but didn’t know about it. So he kept working construction in freezing Detroit! The misery! Then they track him down and bring him to SA! The joy, the redemption! But still he prefers to keep it street in Detroit! The noble moral triumph! And “silver magic ships, we carry…” playing in the background the whole way through.

I had no chance. My only hope was to rustle my popcorn loudly every time I sniffed back the tears. And pretend to cough when I emitted an involuntary wail as Rodriguez played the Good Hope Centre.

What the hell. So I’m an emotional softie. At least I’m experiencing life in all its tender textures, savouring the passionate peaks and valleys of ecstasy and despair, riding the thrilling rollercoaster of sentiment and joy.

I’m handing in my Man Card on Monday.

           

           

            

Stop! Drama time!

 Sometimes I’m a total drama queen. And like fellow drama queen Kanye West I bring it on myself!

            As the low-rent Yeezy, I am able to sense drama opportunities approaching and optimize them for maximum dramatic impact.

            For instance, if I am running low on petrol, I will avoid filling up until my fuel gauge runs deep into reserve and beyond.

            That situation adds so much spice to life. Every car trip becomes fraught with increasing risk, with danger, even. A trip to Maboneng, at night, with the gauge on reserve is suddenly a super-hectic stress mission. The very atmosphere begins to crackle with tension. And say now you do run out of fuel, well that’s the beginning of a whole new adventure, a whole new drama.

            Sometimes it does get a bit ridiculous, though.

            Like I’ve got this radio show on this digital station called EuroTrashMusic. I love my radio show. I love the freedom of expression and the utter lack of a playlist. I love it being live, without a safety net. And I love the discipline of having to be at the station at 4pm. It creates the illusion of a proper job.

            So on afternoon I’m merrily cruising down to EuroTrash for my show, fuel gauge on the customary red, frisson of drama and tension in the air like farts, when the car coughs once, loses power and quits in the middle of the M1 South.

It’s 26 minutes till my show starts. Drama time!

I’m roughly two kays from the nearest petrol station – I’ve got to run. Also, I have my laptop with me to do the show off, and I don’t want to leave that thing unattended in my car, so I’ve got to bring it with me.

            So commences a desperate, hell-for-leather plunge through the streets of Oaklands to that Shell there by the previous offramp. And you must understand, I’m going at full pace.

An obliging petrol attendant gives me a used five-litre canister for strawberry Slush Puppy flavouring, we fill that thing and I stagger those two kays back to my car, laptop over one shoulder and canister leaking pink petrol all over me in the other hand.

            With a kay left to go, I start feeling the effects of extreme exertion. I haven’t felt this shattered since I hit that cramp halfway up Inchanga in the Comrades. I’m still wearing my jersey, so I’m now overheating something terrible. I’m the exact colour of a 93-octane Slush Puppy, let alone smelling like one.

            It’s a twisted, magenta, fully-clothed Crossfit challenge. My phone is vibrating in my pocket like some lady’s massager, no doubt the station manager wondering where the hell I am. I’m giving these Fidel Castro wheezes and my face is now a violent purple, oozing sweat like Big Show’s leotard.

            It’s nine minutes to showtime when I collapse into the side of my car and start pouring petties all over the side of it, fiddling with the fuel inlet and crying with desperation. Three missed calls so far.

            I make it to the station with seconds to spare, dive behind the desk and start my show shrieking and coughing while something pops alarmingly in my left lung.

            The video webcast of Hagen’s House featured a bright pink person who’d either had a pulmonary embolism or just been in a fight and then had a bucket of brake fluid poured all over him.

            Being in that sealed studio on a warm spring day was like being inside the petrol tank of a Bangladeshi ferry. The main dramatic element of the show was my cough deteriorating into petrochemical pleurisy, to the strains of Machine Head and the Stooges.

            For the pink Kanye West of Braamfontein, it was about enough drama for one day.