Archive for March, 2010



05
Mar
10

When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be Alan Knott-Craig

A long time ago, I was a journalist working with a team of people from all over the world and I felt pretty fucking special and amazing.

We got paid every week in cash, huge wads of R200 notes carefully counted, stacked and packed into brown paper bags.

See, what we were doing wasn’t exactly legal. It would bore the hell out of me to have to explain it as I’ve probably told this story a hundred times, so instead I want you to think of the scene in Fight Club where they’re in the boutique store selling soap.

 

 

The narrator says something about how all they’re doing is selling rich people their fat asses back to them – we were doing the same thing, only in an editorial sense with neat, official rate cards with prices printed in Euros.

You want a page of advertising in our report? That’ll be eighty-fucking-nine thousand Euros please.

I know what it feels like to be escorted out of someone’s office by security. I also know what it feels like to lie to mayors, ministers and high-powered CEOs right to their smug little faces instead of the other way around.

You’d be surprised how easy it is – 70% of winning people over is looking the part, get that right and with enough important-sounding smarmy banter you can bullshit your way into anything.

That’s how I landed the interview with Alan Knott-Craig, who was the then CEO of Vodacom. A phone call here, an official-looking series of faxes and emails there and then next thing I knew, I was waltzing into his offices with my Hawaiian team-mate Steven, both of us dressed to the nines in expensive business suits and leather shoes polished until they looked like black mirrors.

I wore a fucking tie. I had a fucking briefcase. I was 22 years old.

For the record, old Alan had the hottest PA I’ve ever seen in my life. That woman was hot enough to melt tar, fahk. It’s a smart move because before you’ve even met the man you already have this grudging respect for him whether you’re conscious of it or not.

 

 

Understandably, I was more than a little nervous and had asked Steven, 12 years my senior, which interview question of the ones I’d drafted I should start with.

‘None of them,’ he replied.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Dude, you look like a kid fresh outta college.’

‘I am a kid fresh outta college.’

‘Yeah, so you’ve got to earn the man’s respect or he’s never going to take you seriously. Start with a difficult question, show him you’re not afraid of him.’

‘O… kay…’

‘Ask him why Vodacom’s cell phone rates in South Africa are so much more expensive than other places in the world.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t think that’s going to piss him off?’

‘Trust me, after that he’ll know we aren’t fucking around and after that, he’ll buy some advertising in the report.’

‘Cool. Ok, I’ll do it.’

He’s a tall guy, ol’ Alan. Big hands. Exudes unwavering confidence and is direct to the point of almost coming across as rude.

 

 

None of this helped my nerves. We all sat down and I opened my briefcase with trembling hands as he sat there, calm as a cat with its claw through a mouse’s tail.

‘So Mr Knott-Craig,’ I stammered once I was set up and ready to go.

‘Call me Alan,’ he replied.

‘Alan. Why are Vodacom’s rates so much more expensive than other places in the world?’

And good old Alan, good old Mr Knott-Craig, I’ll never forget his response as long as I live. Me, a skinny kid out of college no idea what the hell I was doing, and him, one of the most influential men in South Africa, the chief executive officer of an empire.

He stared straight at me with a look that could weld steel and said one word.

‘Crap.’

Which is exactly what I did.

And that’s why when I grow up I want to be Alan Knott-Craig, what a fucking badass.

-ST

04
Mar
10

SlickTiger Meets Gary The Cannibal

“I’m in a gay relationship,” he said, “I’m not sure if you… might have… heard anything about that…?”

When complete strangers open up like that with me, my first instinct is to go deadpan. I fake nonchalance because I’m totally cool with that. This is 2010 for chrissake, people are entitled to live free and without prejudice when it comes to their lifestyle choices.

 

 

And no, it doesn’t alarm me on some level that I’m sharing a room with this man, didn’t he just say he’s in a relationship?

“No, I hadn’t,” I replied, “but, um, I respect that.”

“We’ve been together 8 years now.”

“That’s a long time,” I said, genuinely impressed, “the longest relationship I’ve managed so far is about and year and a half. Straight relationship. The longest straight relationship. Um. Not that I’ve tried any other kind, haha… yeah, so…”

“Should we head downstairs?”

“Fine with me.”

And that’s pretty much how our first conversation went. They got much better after that, as they do once alcohol is introduced, and by the time we all met up for dinner that night, Gary and I were good friends.

Also, because we were two out of the only three males on the conference with about 26 women, we ended up hanging out a lot purely by default.

Shortly after we all sat down for dinner the MD of the company told me that they weren’t going to make us n00bs dance or sing a song for everyone, but that we would have to stand up, introduce ourselves and make a speech during dinner instead.

I love shit like that and so the second the MD, henceforth known as ‘Hot-Boss’, made the announcement to the table, I volunteered to go first, right then and there, before dinner had even been served.

Always go first. Don’t be a pussy. People will respect your courage and, having no one else to compare you with, will love everything you say.

I kept my speech nice and short. I thanked them for hiring me, I thanked them for inviting me on the conference, told them how excited I was to be starting out at such a friendly and rad company and sat back down.

“Wait a minute,” one of the girls chirped, “tell us why you got arrested!”

Ahh Christ.

 

 

In one of the ‘getting to know you’ games earlier that day it had emerged that I had been arrested when I was 13. Funny how things like that seem to pop up at the least appropriate moments.

Eyebrows were raised. Hot-Boss tried to brush it off by saying, ‘Well, there’s a question we’re definitely going to add to the list the next time we interview someone.” Queue polite / nervous laughter (keep in mind this was before the alcohol started flowing).

Under the surface though I could see she was a little unsettled – the last thing you want to find out about the person you’ve just hired in that they’ve had a run-in with the fuzz.

You can read all about the first time I got arrested here, it’s actually a pretty tame story. Me and some buddies smashed a few windows on a derelict building and got caught and arrested for vandalism.

Still though, it sounded bad when I explained the story over dinner that night, it was awkward and I sat down sheepishly when I was done and made a mental note to just shut the fuck up about that stuff in future.

Shortly thereafter Jager-bombs began to drop like grenades down a VC trench.

The next n00b stood up after dinner was served and got a slightly more severe grilling than me, she clocked in at about 4 minutes. She survived with her dignity intact though, but only just.

More Jager-bombs dropped. Speeches got longer and longer as the people listening grilled the n00bs with one question after the next. Questions like ‘How old were you the first time you got drunk?’, ‘When did you first have sex?’ and ‘Who’s the hottest girl here?’ started popping up. Much hilarity ensued.

Jager, Jager, Jager. Bomb, bomb, bomb.

Eventually everyone got tired of speeches and hit the upstairs lounge to party on down and cut up the dance floor.

Sometime during the festivities someone figured out that Gary hadn’t made his n00b speech at which point we all started chanting ‘Ga-ry! Ga-ry! Ga-ry!” which reminded me of the crowd chanting ‘Ru-dy! Ru-dy! Ru-dy!” from the movie with the same name about a retarded football player.

 

 

Being surprisingly shy in front of a crowd, Gary tried to get us to simmer down in the hope that we’d all forget about it after awhile and carry on partying.

No such luck.

Hot-Boss asked him to tell us about himself and he told us a killer story about how when he served in the army (navy?) he was sent on a ship to guard PW Botha only to end up accompanying ol’ Pik on what can only be described as a ‘ho-run’.

Pik was in the mood for some Eastern European women, of which there happened to be a few on a neighbouring ship, so they rowed off in a life-raft towards this other ship only to get shot down completely by the women / security on the ship and forced to row back empty handed.

“Hahaha!” people chuckled, “nice story Gary!” “Tell us another story Gary!” “Yeah, tell us another one!” everyone shouted in happy, drunk unison.

“Well,” said Gary, “another thing I’ve learned is that human flesh is overrated.”

[Insert record scratching sound effect]

“What?! Overrated how?” one of the braver girls present asked.

“As a food source,” Gary stated, matter-of-factly.

The room exploded. “What the fuck?!” “You’ve eaten human flesh?!” “Tell us you’re joking Gary!” everyone shouted in bewildered, drunk unison.

“It was in North Africa back in the day when a lot of people still did that and it wasn’t really frowned upon. I had no idea what I was eating, I was only told afterwards,” he said defensively, “it tasted quite sweet.”

Cut to the inside of my head where the opening scene from the movie Ravenous started playing, the one where a tent full of starving soldiers all tuck into a bloody meal of suspicious-looking circular steaks.

 

 

It’s shot mostly in close-ups. They tear at the meat with their teeth, blood running down their chins and congealing in their beards, while the wet sound of them all chewing gets louder and louder and the cuts get faster and faster and faster and…

“GARY THE CANNIBAL!” I screamed like a man waking up from a nightmare. Everyone burst out laughing, well, everyone but the intern who was struggling to lift her jaw back off the floor.

Me, on the other hand, I was ecstatic. Gary’s priceless over share nullified my earlier confession completely – who the fuck cares about a few broken windows when you have a human flesh eater in your midst?

Now there’s a question to add to the interview list – True or False: Human flesh tastes sweet?

Hahahahahaha! Ahh, good times I tell ya, good times 😉

-ST

03
Mar
10

The Tiger Returns

I’ll tell you one thing about Christians, they’ve got the monopoly on guilt. Hell, I don’t even go to church or practise Christianity, but when I do bad shit, the guilt comes thick and fast.

I’ve been meaning to post for a long fucking time, I was in a good routine y’know? People they used to say, ‘Yeah, that SlickTiger guy, funny fucker. Posts every day, EVERY DAY. We love him. We want him in and around our mouths.’

 

 

Now they say, ‘Yeah, that SlickTiger guy, what a jerk. He had something going there for awhile, but it’s clear he ain’t got the stones to see it through. He’s dead to us now.”

Well, I got news Party People, like a cockroach scuttling out the drain after the last nuke wipes humanity out for good, I’m back, and I’m badder than ever 😉

Since I last checked in, crazy shit has gone down. I packed my life up in record time, jumped in The Red Baron and blazed a trail of fire clear across this beautiful, fucked up country of ours.

Joburg showed me its true face just as I left. I saw it the last time the sun set, just as I was about to get on the N1 to Bloem. Its true face looks like this:

 

 

I rolled into Bloem late, my schedule was tight as a drum because my new company had organised a 3 day conference that they really wanted me to attend which started ON the day I was originally going to arrive in CT.

Bloemfontein is a ghost town at 9 on a Monday night. I could count the other cars I saw on one hand. A stray dog nosed through some garbage. An empty chip packet blew scraping down the road.

The next day I got up at 4.30, showered and left by 5. There was about an hour’s grace before the heavens opened like a floodgate and I drove the next 6 hours in rain that fell so heavy it was coming down in sheets.

Try overtaking trucks in weather like that. Visibility is zero, but it’s ok because you can see the other car’s headlights right?

Fuck no. I counted about 15 trucks and cars that were driving with their headlights off, and in every one of those cars I saw my own death, splattered at 120 km/h all over the asphalt.

 

 

I’d be worm food if it weren’t for porn. It saved my life – click this sentence to find out how.

I hit Stellenbosch at around 4.30 and headed straight to Cheetah Outreach where I found her feeding four cheetahs. She had one by the scruff of his neck, a huge handful of fur between her fingers.

‘Hey!’ I said, ‘Stop hurting the animals.’

She turned around to give me a piece of her mind, but stopped mid sentence when she saw it was me.

Two and a half weeks – I could see the difference in her. She’s more tanned, she looks relaxed, more at home here than she was back in the Big Smoke, stuck behind a reception desk, whiling her time away filling in vet boards and staring at nothing.

 

 

She hugged me and the feeling of her all soft and skinny against me was good the way a cold drink on a hot day is good, the way a deep sleep after a hard day is good, good right down to your bones.

13 hours later I’m sitting in a bus with my new co-workers, singing ‘The Wheels On The Bus Go Round and Round’ into a microphone plugged into the dashboard.

6 hours after that I’m line dancing to ‘Sexy Back’ and smashing Jager-bombs into my face with what I can only describe as hordes of women.

In life sometimes, you just go with it. If you’re me, you take that a step further.

I could go on about the conference, a lot went down over the three days, but I think the word I’m looking for to sum it all up here is ‘radass’. I invented that word, you can use it but you have to reference this blog 😉

The weekend was amazing. J-Rab and I hit Bikini Beach near Gordon’s Bay and on Sunday went to meet my buddy Scatter’s 4 week old daughter.

It’s amazing how perfect babies come out. They’re finished so neatly, ten fingers, ten toes (hopefully) tiny mouth, fat arms and legs. Then they grow up and get all funny-looking and full of imperfections, flaws and fuck-ups.

And now I’m in the thick of things. The new job has started guns blazin’ but you know me, it’s nothing I can’t handle 😉 Oh, before I forget, here’s a pic of me on the first night I arrived at my new place:

 

 

Tune in tomorrow for a post I like to call ‘SlickTiger Meets Gary The Cannibal’.

Ka-Pow!

-ST