First thing I saw on TV this morning was one of those local crime news shows. Of main interest was the ongoing case of the Hilton New Year shooting. If you haven't heard by now, a waiter working in the Fluid Club was shot and killed during the early hours of Saturday while the club was still in the midst of its New Year's celebrations. The alleged shooter - though witnesses and evidence are making it increasingly positive - is Adiguna Sutowo. Who? Yeah, I had no idea before this incident either. Turns out he's the son of the decased former director of Pertamina, Ibnu Sutowo, and younger brother of Pontjo, who more or less owns the Hilton (and no, that doesn't mean they're related to Paris and Nicky).
As the story goes, Adiguna was at the club with a lady friend, who gave her credit card to the waiter to pay for his tab (why he wasn't paying his own friggin' tab, I have no idea). The waiter came back to tell the woman that her card had been rejected and asked if she had any other cards for payment. Now, normal people would wonder what the problem was and go sort it out, maybe get a little bit incensed, maybe take it up with the manager. But in the world of the rich, pompous and loaded (in more ways than one), the skank started screaming words to the effect of, "How dare you! Don't you know that his here is the majority shareholder?!" and Monsieur Sutowo took out a revolver and shot the poor guy in the head. In the middle of a busy crowd. It was probably the booze doing the thinking, but it still boggles the mind to imagine that one would be so conceited enough to think they could get away with shooting someone in public. He didn't even have the good sense to have a bodyguard or other lackey do the dirty work.
The waiter, a 28 year old named Rudy, was in his final year of law school at Bung Karno University. He was only filling in at Fluid because his regular workplace was under renovation. And then his girlfriend, whom he was going to marry in a few months' time, only found out about the incident after she arrived at the club a few hours later to wish him a happy New Year. Tragic.
Anyway, the case is undergoing investigation. Police have yet to find the gun, but they did find bullets hidden in the toilet of the hotel room where Adiguna was staying. Sixteen witnesses have been questioned, fifteen of which confirm that Adiguna was the shooter, and the exception is his wife (no surprise there). The president himself has had his say on matters, mentioning that justice must be upheld. Here's hoping justice does prevail, Adiguna gets sent away for a very long time, and doesn't get any perks or special treatment in prison, save for being the inmates' favourite bitch.
Another item in the crime news was more down-to-earth: a would-be purse snatcher getting the bejeezus beaten (and kicked. And whipped) out of him by a mob. Though these beatings apre pretty commonplace (at least based on what you read and see in the news), I don't think I've ever seen one in person. The after-effects, at most, even on TV. So this was the first time I saw it happening, albeit halfway through: by the time the cameras caught up with the action, the tattooed, bloody perpetrator was already down to his skivvies and was trying to keep them on while trying to escape into traffic from the mob's fists, feet and swinging belts. You should've seen the guy with the belt go at it like he was riding Seabiscuit. People were getting their shots in even after the police arrived to take the thief away. Anarchic vigilantism is rarely pretty...in fact, it never is. But if it makes would-be thugs think twice before taking up a life of crime...well, I'm not condoning it, but I do hope someday things will reach a point where people don't have to take things into their own hands...and feet.
Still on a negative vibe (hey, I'm on a roll), you know those Friendster bulletin board chain posts, where someone starts a topic and people paste their replies under the original post? There's one floating around my network in which the original author laments the fact that the New Year's party at the Indonesian Embassy in Berlin was cancelled in light of the recent disasters. Needless to say, this drew the ire of several people. Out of curiosity, I thought I'd track down the insensitive cow - not an easy task, given I had to sift through several degrees of friend networks, and even then I couldn't find the culprit. Then I tried doing a gallery search, and after several rounds of fine-tuning, I think I finally found the guilty party: a 19 year old Indonesian girl currently residing in Berlin. I don't know why I spent all that time and energy to track her down; I was thinking of pasting her Friendster and e-mail addresses in the bulletin board so that others could send heaps of abuse messages to her inbox, but I think I had an attack of conscience. She's just a kid, after all. A dumb and shallow one, granted, but a kid, nonetheless. A lesson still needs to be taught, but I don't think I'm the one to do it. Let's just hope someone close to her reads the board and sorts her out properly.
On to more positive stuff: today was the first extended drive I took after sending the car to the garage to sort out a problem with the steering wheel which kept veering to the left. It turns out that the front tyres were uneven (as a result of the tyre change when I had a flat several months ago), causing the steering to go off-balance. I asked for the tyres to be rotated, and then it was discovered that the rear tyres had been misplaced. Apparently, those arrow-like engravings on the side of tyres aren't just for decoration. D'oh. Anyway, I think those rear tyres have been in place and unchanged for about two years, so it seems I've been driving them wrong during that period. Double d'oh. After the tyres were switched around, I don't know if it was psychological or something else, but the car handled much more smoothly. I can once again take my hands off the wheel without having to worry that I'll plough into various objects on my left. This comes in handy when doing other stuff, like, say, peeling price tags off newly-purchased CDs.
Speaking of which, I just bought two - Jimmy Eat World's
Futures and Live's
Awake: The Best Of. Both are: 1) the deluxe versions, of which I'm always a sucker for, and 2) the last copies on the shelves, which is why I felt the urge to buy both at once and avoid the classic scenario of them not being available the next time I go to the shop.
In the case of the former, I'd been meaning to get the album for a while now, especially as I'd earmarked it for review in the next issue of
djakarta!. I'd held off buying because I was hoping to get the deluxe. I wasn't going to buy the tape because I was expecting a freebie to arrive at the office, but it hadn't the last time I went. As deadline approached, I supposed I was going to have to listen to it on Halief's iMac, but I held off on that too, because I prefer the whole package when enjoying my music - which includes the actual packaging itself, as in lyrics, liner notes and other info tidbits they can cram on your average CD sleeve. Anyway, the deluxe edition has a bonus CD containing demo versions of all the songs on the album, plus the band's liner notes on how the demos eventually evolved into the final versions. I think I'll put off listening to the demo disc until I'm familiar with the album, so I can appreciate the creative process better. A little snag, though: the local version of the album comes with a bonus track, and I'm wondering if it's worth the purchase of the tape. Hopefully the freebie will arrive soon, so I won't have to make that decision.
And in the case of the latter, I'm a lapsed Live fan. Like most people who was ever a fan, I got into them on their second album,
Throwing Copper, which was one of the soundtracks for my last year at junior high. I even sang 'Selling The Drama' and 'I Alone' at this end of school year thing - my first gig ever. Not that there have been many, but I digress. Anyway, even though it was the first time I'd ever performed, I thought it was a good idea to be all rock star-like and whack the mic stand on the stage floor - much to the chagrin of the equipment rental people. Hey, I was in the zone, man.
Anyway, I liked the follow-up to
Throwing Copper,
Secret Samadhi, even though it apparently killed off their popularity. I myself dropped off on the next album,
The Distance To Here. Just couldn't find any songs I deemed likeable at all. Got the next one,
V, out of habit, but didn't pay much attention to it, either. Got their sixth,
Birds Of Pray, for free, but I still haven't heard it. Heck, my initial copy of
Awake was also a freebie tape - but it was enough to get the nostalgia kicking in. And so I got the CD, which strangely enough has a different tracklisting than the tape, and most probably with the local CD too. The bonus disc is a DVD of all their videos, which also includes songs not on the CD, plus an interview with lead singer Ed Kowalczyk, where he talks about the band's evolution, their albums and their videos. In between, there's lots of "serious artist/hippie" talk, and the revelation that they recorded
Secret Samadhi in Jamaica and got "very friendly" with the gardener, which is why it came out so weird that even Ed doesn't understand a lot of the stuff he wrote on it. Ah, pot: kills your brain cells
and your record sales. Just say no, kids.
