The funkadelic sound of “Flowers” by Cibo Matto gives the room a 60’s feel… “I want certain words, more than a thousand flowers. Memory rubs in my heart, like sand on my feet. My heart is frozen tonight, like blue coral in the sea…”

Today was a quiet day in since going with mom to visit the Aztec exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts didn’t happen. Decided to watch the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, which had been dust-collecting on my VCR for some time now. Not a bad movie and not a great one either. It had heart and was better than The Phantom Menace, but still lacked the magic that the original trilogy had. But I was young back then. It would be hard for a film today to live up to the expectations from my youth. Even Sanje, who was a massive Star Wars fan, had told me Attack of the Clones was not that good after we had just seen Japanese movies Red Shadow and Blue Spring.

Me: Hollywood movies just don’t interest me much anymore. For something novel I can always count on the east.
Sanje: I’m never going to be able to watch Hollywood movies again. Thanks for doing that, you bastard.
Me: So how would you rate the films we saw today against Hollywood’s Star Wars: Attack of the Clones?
Sanje: It’s shite. I don’t know what was going through [George] Lucas’ head. He cocked up. It’s so crap compared to Red Shadow and Blue Spring.

(Note: I had previously been led to believe that the usage of the word “shite” and “Star Wars” in the same sentence would be considered blasphemy by Sanje.)

Me: You enjoyed those that much?
Sanje: You don’t understand. Blue Spring is one of my favorite movies now.
Me: Oh.

And since that day, he’s been pretty keen on watching films from Asia at the cinema with me. Have to go check out some of the movies at the Thai Film Festival from next week then.

Yesterday was quite a good day. I decided to hit the Serpentine Gallery (housed in the pleasant Kensington Gardens) for Takashi Murakami’s Kaikai Kiki exhibit (Kaikai and Kiki are the names of two of his characters).

Murakami is the curator of Hiropon Factory, who leads a maverick team of artists (which include the ever-popular Aya Takano and Yoshitomo Nara), all of whom have their fingers on the pulse of Japanese pop culture. He’s tapped into manga and the otaku underground and showed us its culture via his scuptures and paintings. His work is known all over the world and is one of the most well-known in his native Japan. Since I’m quite a fan of Murakami and have an affinity for avante-garde, contemporary and pop cultural art pieces, especially otaku-based art, I was sooo there.

From looking at no more than a couple of examples of Murakami’s work, two things are made abundantly clear. 1: Murakami likes to use bright colours, 2: Murakami is obsessed with eyes. In all his works one can see great attention has been commissioned to them. In some pieces, eyes would fill a section of his space like they were trying to imitate the holes in the canvas, and in others they would be like fishing boats in a sea of gratuitous colour. But not just quantity. Also quality. A steady hand has been applied to create highly detailed irises, composed of his trademark concentric circle patterns with varied bright colours.

Walking through the gallery was like what I’d imagine it would be like stepping into an exaggerated psychedelic acid flashback; a hallucination. The wallpapers (smiling flowers and eyeballs) were even themed to complement the art on show and it immediately hit me that Murakami has a thing for sunflowers, mushrooms and the surreal. In Murakami’s world there is no land because not everyone has feet. Things don’t walk or run. They float. Colours are bright and scenes are trippy. Acid flashback indeed.

[Clockwise from top-left: Mr Dob’s Adventures in Wonderland, Kaikai Kiki News, DOB, Mr DOB]

Murakami does not leave things in 2-dimensions either. Asides from the super-flat 3-dimensional paintings (acrylic on canvas on board), he also crafts 3-dimensional art pieces of his many recurring themes (e.g. large globes with eyes), a few of which graced the Serpentine. In this particular exhibition it was obvious that he drew some inspiration from Andy Warhol. This may not be evident in his other works though, which include morph-capable flying robots and Hiropon (featuring overly large-breasted fluorescent-haired nubile bikini-clad women squeezing milk out of their nipples, which spirals in the air around her like a skipping rope, serving as a link between the nipples, leaving the observer wondering where the milk is coming from and where it’s going. All this, amongst zero gravity). I’ve been told you cannot walk too far on a street in Japan before spotting someone (99% of the time, a male) reading some sort of book containing pornography, whether it’s cartoon-porn (hentai) or the real deal. Japan is also known for its fashion sense and that being bright and sometimes fluorescent. Going by his work, I didn’t doubt Murakami was amongst the most respected artists there.

He had even lent his artwork for an exclusive Louis Vuitton handbag range. Good marketing, because anything designed by Louis Vuitton are highly sought after (luxury) items anyway. I doubt there is a woman or girl out there who wouldn’t welcome one onto their arm. I knew they costed a lot when some time ago I asked Sanje how much one was.

“Put it this way, mate. If you want one, they put you on a waiting list.”

I think from that, a Louis Vuitton handbag should be best saved as a peace offering to a heavily pissed-off significant other, who you simply cannot lose because she has the faces of your children etched in her eyes. When it comes to misbehaviour, penance doesn’t come cheap. Better start saving.

Later in the day I met up with Yogi, Kristy and Sanje for dinner at a Mezza place off Bond Street. Yogi’s meetup on Wednesday with the girl his parents arranged to meet went alright, but they didn’t hit it off. I doubt they would have anyway because it looks to me like he’s grown very attached to Kristy. I could tell he was fond of her because he jokes about being a bigamist and how much he likes different women. I’m sure he does, but joking about it in front of her tells me that he wouldn’t dream of cheating on her and that he is comfortable being with her. Coming clean about a crime before it happens often prevents it from happening.

He also had a new toy he brought back from Orlando. A tiny digital camera cum web-cam, which fits alongside a bunch of keys. Furthermore, it holds 400 pictures. 400! Amazing. “Good for collecting pictures of girlfriends,” he says. During the evening, Kristy tells me that she’s not had any luck finding me a girlfriend, looking disappointed. She’s still on this quest and to be honest I have absolutely no idea why she had undertaken it. And no, I don’t remember asking her to do so either. “Oh, don’t trouble yourself. I’ve got my eye on someone at the moment anyway,” I told her. I would say anything to get her to stop. Truth or lie.