Mohombi, Jay Sean, and Mediocrity

Hear that?

The sound of mediocrity, scattered over a screechy beat.

Mohombi, mohombi, Mohombeeee…. people chant to what was once the Cranberries Zombie. My ears are already bleeding. What’s worse? He’s not even singing live. We paid 2000 bucks to watch him lip-sync from a distance. Awesome.

The international artists that come here are like bubblegum. Sweet sugary stuff that has your attention for a while and then you realise it’s tasteless and you need to spit it out.

.Cases in point, Mohombi, Sean-Paul before that, and now, supposedly, Jay Sean.
Oh, and Sacha Lopez getting everyone to shake their booty.

That’s right, I’m a hipster. I’m typing this with my non-branded environmentally friendly shades on.

No, but seriously. Why can’t we get down some good acts? Too expensive? Yeah, but we were ready to shell out half the national budget for the Commonwealth Games. I’m sure we can find a few millions somewhere. Maybe the Chinese could help out.

… But yes. Thus far there hasn’t really been anyone showing up to get excited about. To be fair, it might be because we don’t always give the warmest welcome.
I seem to remember a grenade being lobbed at a Shahrukh Khan concert.
Then there was the time we stoned MTV and Akon’s visa got cancelled. Good times.

Of course, since there’s no international acts, you end up going, ‘to support these local endeavours’ or something to that effect. These events are an interesting study in and of themselves, because of the people that show up.

No matter where you have a concert, whether in a car park, an abandoned warehouse or an overcrowded stadium, you’ll have people totter in on high heels or ridiculous boots. This is fine if you’re not going to end up jumping up and down and screaming your guts out/reaching frantically for the artist’s sweaty towels. But that is what ends up happening. As if they’re not already in a precarious position, they’ll then consume enough alcohol to significantly blur vision. It’s a miracle these people don’t fall flat on their faces. At least it’s amusing to watch them totter around between acts. In fact, sometimes they’re more entertaining than the acts themselves.

I realise I sound like a grouch, now. I’ll admit that these artists have some value. They sell records, they’re popular. Nothing wrong with that.

It’s just not to my taste. What can I say, there’s a limited amount of booty shakin’ one can do. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

I’m sure there are others out there who are just as disgruntled about this state of affairs as I am.

Right?

RIGHT?!

Sex is evil

At least, according to our self-appointed moral police.

It sucks to be a sexually liberal person in this country – whatever the gender. (And there are three of those, lest you forget). And by sexually liberal we don’t necessarily mean the ability and/or desire to fuck anything with a pulse. No. What we mean is the acute awareness of your own sexuality that some of us western-thinking traitors seem to possess and our capacity to be, God forbid, comfortable with it.

Now this might not be true to some of the posh-fag Colombo 7 types reading this (no offence), but to the rest of us, being open about our views on human reproduction (the most natural thing in the world) somehow constitutes a crime beyond redemption. Because what happens behind closed doors should stay the fuck behind said closed doors, right?

Wrong!

That’s not remotely why it’s a cardinal sin to even talk about sex. No, sir. It’s a sin because it goes against what a bigoted, close-minded few would have you believe are the Sinhala-Buddhist values this nation was founded upon.

Ladies and gentlemen, bullshit never stunk this bad. The truth is that an overwhelming majority of these so called Sinhala-Buddhist “values” are actually imports from Victorian England. Before the Brits came here, Lankans were getting it on like nobody’s business. The women were practically topless (although, not for sexual reasons, admittedly) and the dudes were well known for not being able to keep it in their pants amude. In the Kandyan Kingdom, wife-swapping, a family of brothers sharing one wife (එක ගෙයි කෑම), and having multiple-partners (බහු පුරුෂ/බහු භාර්යා) were the order of the day. THAT’s how horny our ancestors were. And they didn’t give a damn who thought what.

How did we go from THAT to “OMG. Sex is so evul!”? Where did we go wrong?

Sure, sure, people are still sticking things in vaginas everywhere, but the topic of sex has become so taboo that even something as absolutely essential as sex-education is frowned upon, if not actively discouraged. A divorced woman who finds herself a boyfriend will forever be labeled a slut. A man who frequents brothels will never be accepted by “civilised” society. Porn is literally a crime. In movies and television, for instance, violence of all kinds is shown in complete abundance, all the time, but the minute a sex scene is even suggested, censorship raises its ugly head like an erection running on Viagra.

What happened? How do we end this? Should we, even?

We come in peace – for now

Some of you might object to the idea of a couple of upstarts just walking into the local blogosphere and foisting our opinions on you.

Tough.

Being opinionated seems to be part of the job, from what we can tell. And we wouldn’t want to disappoint you.

So expect to hear our views, whether you like them or not.

We’re going to be different to… um… all the other appropriately Sri Lankan themed overly opinionated blogs out there.

Great. And here we thought we were catering to a niche market. There goes our secret dreams of being local blogwhorescelebrities.

But we’ll be entertaining, we promise.

For instance, we promise not to make you read about what we had for breakfast.

Unless it was chocolate covered bacon. Or Kaludodol. (See what we did there?)

So, be prepared to have our opinion forced down your throat.

Enjoy!

… or not.

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