Last Saturday 28th August 2004, 0200 hours, after Friday’s Mont Kiara Jazz Fest, I got a call from The Agent. He needed me to go for the advanced screening of The Bourne Supremacy at Midvalley at 1030 hours in the morning, thus ruining my plans of getting sleep to go out in the afternoon for a screening of Space Balls. Since he had sent all his agents to Genting (with him) he had practically noone to go write a review for this screening unless he wrestled some agents out of God. Fine then, I went, and I called upon the accompaniment of someone who insisted on calling this movie The Bourne Legacy (he had watched the prequel, The Bourne Identity). He was fashionably late. We watched and I was blur and yet entertained.

Legacy Man (I’ll call him that from now on) brought me to lunch in his funky legacy (auto)mobile. We then set out to find this elusive place where Space Balls was to be shown. Unfortunately, it evaded my memory, and at 1400 hours The Agent called again. This time, he bumped into an old friend (also a hot chick) who wanted to meet me badly. He even passed the phone kidnapper style to me, so I could ascertain yes she was indeed female, but not long enough for me to ascertain the identity of aforementioned hot chick. “Get your ass down to KL Sentral“, he said… “Her limo has to go already! She wants to take you on a tour around town, and she might even go for the Jazz Fest tonight so maybe she could drop you.”

The Agent knew that I was intending to go to the Jazz Fest’s finale on Saturday, at 1800 hours, with Steve Thornton‘s clinic.

And so, Legacy Man set a plan only rogue nigger cops in cop movies do. I’d go into Castell, a fancy restaurant near Malayan University, and ask for a map. “Can I have a map please? My boss wants to eat here.” They gave me their leaflet with a map on it. Alas, the map was too simple; our intention was to get an insight of the roads within Malayan University, so that we could enter from Jalan Universiti and exit at Pantai, way nearer to KL Sentral.

We drove coolly past the guardhouse, but they asked us to pull aside anyway. “What’s the plan, man? Whadda we do?” “Chill man, I got a plan.” There was a detailed map nearby; he would inspect it. I would tell the guard that we were going to pick up a friend from Point A (near where we parked) and send him to Point B (near the Pantai exit). I injected a little drama by calling our invisible friend. Timely indeed, that The Agent would call again while I was pretending to ask, reminding me to hurry.

In nigga cop movie style, Legacy Man forgot where he was supposed to go from the map. We made a circle before escaping into Pantai. On the way to KL Sentral, I received an SMS – the screening would be in Mont Kiara on Sunday instead. (Now I wasn’t sure if it was even supposed to be on Saturday to begin with!) While we did not get to watch Space Balls, he did learn a shortcut he would find useful in his everyday life.

I was greeted at KL Sentral by The Agent… and the genie. Still a hot chick, but yes, I fell into his trap. Dammit. There was a van waiting for me. Foolishly, I got in.

There was an Indian man sleeping inside. Junior, he was called. There were other people in the van, but their lethargy showed that they, too, were reluctant to go to… KLIA. Once there, we met North the boyband from down South. On the way, I complained about The Agent and how he tricked me! He conned me! That conniving liar!

It was 1800 hours and the show was far from over. I was getting restless. It was not until 2030 hours that we returned, and I rushed to Mont Kiara. I took photos of:

KC and the Thornton band. Or rather, AfroAsia with Steve Thornton. Or AsiaBeat?

Left: KC on 6-string bass. Right: Steve Thornton makes music with his belly, looking at the saxophone player, probably wondering, “why is KC stealing our show?”

KC was awesome. He played a hollowbody electric nylon-string guitar without any soundholes or pickups under the strings. (If I had a guitar without anything under the strings, I’d put 36 frets!) When he played 6-string bass, there was no guitarist. Being a guitarist myself, I was more interested in his act than Steve’s African beats. Add to that his voice; it was comfortably far away from diva and far away from Eddie Vedder as well.

I bumped into the Indian man again, as well as a sister of an owner of a cute, shiny, tangy orangy Picanto that Smashpop and Warmpaw have been drooling at on its Flash site:

Oh and on Sunday I watched Space Balls. Happy ending.