The Gas Stove

I wrote about my high school chat group last year. The WhatsApp group was fun, but admittedly quite tense in its early years. You got people saying the wrong things, temper would flare and before you knew it, someone had already left the group. With all kinds of characters grouped into one and the egos unchecked, that was bound to happen.

But it'd been almost six year since the group's troubled infancy and by now, the group had been matured and so were the dynamics. By natural selection, the members filled in roles such as a fake CEO, a morning newscaster nobody really cared about, a tiny bully, a factual uncle-man or a good doctor. If this was not unique enough, we even got a controversial man who always abused the 😂 emoji! Then there was me, the one they nicknamed the gas stove.

The gas stove.

So what did the gas stove do? In short, I heated things up and burnt them down real quick, haha. It was neither a friendly nor a noble role, but hey, somebody gotta be the antagonist. Otherwise, it'd be a boring group. The whole idea of it was to make the group more lively. While I might appear as a nuisance, what I did helped bringing random topics that involved many people. Due to this, they ended up participating in the conversation, too. 

As a big fan of Stephen Chow and comedy in general, I was naturally cheeky. It wasn't difficult for me to pick up any lines and turn them upside down. My trademark would be, "nobody/everybody always blablabla these days," where blablabla was a placeholder for something nonsensical. Alternatively, it'd be, "want to know something blablabla?" The blablabla was normally something over the top. The basic guideline was to oppose anything in any way. If you felt confused, this favorite sketch of mine might be able to paint the picture:

Why did I do all this? What was in it for me, actually? Well, life could be stressful. I'd been serious when I was working the whole day. Being a parent required attention and energy, too. All this was tiring. Hence whenever I could, I'd just blow off steam by doing something I loved. And I had always loved nonsense. It cheered me up. The group was my outlet that allowed me to simply be myself. 

The question now was, was my role as pseudo-antagonist well-received? I couldn't say that I never offended some throughout my long, illustrious career. But there was a time when I was missing in action for few days last year due to one big IT issue and they actually missed me. Some friends even pinged me personally to find out what happened. It was heartwarming to learn that the chat group could use a little bit of nuisance they knew and loved...

Kompor Gas

Tahun lalu, saya menulis tentang grup WhatsApp yang beranggotakan teman-teman SMA. Grup ini menyenangkan, tapi tak luput dari ketegangan, terutama di tahun-tahun pertama. Begitu ada yang salah bicara, yang lain lantas tersinggung, lalu cekcok dan meninggalkan grup. Ini sulit terelakkan mengingat begitu banyak karakter berbeda yang terhimpun dalam satu grup. 

Akan tetapi grup ini sudah berjalan hampir enam tahun lamanya dan sekarang menjadi lebih matang serta mengerti satu sama lain. Masing-masing anggota memiliki peran tersendiri. Ada yang menjadi CEO palsu, ada pembaca berita tidak penting di pagi hari, ada tukang buli yang mungil, ada encek yang bijak, ada pula dokter yang baik dan masih banyak lagi. Kalau semua ini masih belum cukup unik, kita bahkan memiliki pria kontroversial yang sering memaksakan penggunaan emoji yang satu ini: 😂! Kemudian ada saya yang dijuluki kompor gas. 

Kompor gas.

Jadi apa yang dilakukan oleh kompor gas? Secara singkat, saya menggoreng isu dan mengadu-domba secara jenaka, haha. Ini bukan peran yang baik, tapi setiap grup perlu pemeran antagonis. Kalau tidak, pasti membosankan grupnya. Apa yang saya kerjakan membuat grup menjadi lebih hidup. Secara sepintas, saya sering terlihat menyebalkan, tapi saya membawa beraneka topik yang mengikutsertakan banyak orang sehingga mereka pun bisa berpartisipasi dalam percakapan. 

Sebagai penggemar berat Stephen Chow dan komedi, pada dasarnya saya memang iseng. Tidak sulit bagi saya untuk berkomentar apa saja yang bertolak belakang dengan apa yang disampaikan. Gaya khas saya yang berlogat Jakarta/Melayu biasanya seperti ini: "hari gini dak ada yang/semua orang blablabla," dimana blablabla adalah sesuatu yang tidak masuk akal. Selain itu saya juga sering menggunakan kalimat, "mau tau yang lebih blablabla?" dan blablabla biasanya sesuatu yang hiperbola. Prinsipnya adalah menyampaikan sesuatu yang kontradiktif. Jika anda masih bingung, gambar berikut ini mungkin bisa memberikan penjelasan: 

Kenapa saya melakukan semua ini? Apa untungnya buat saya? Hidup ini penuh dengan hal yang bikin stres. Saya sudah serius sepanjang hari selama bekerja. Sebagai seorang ayah di rumah, saya juga perlu memusatkan perhatian untuk anak. Semua ini melelahkan. Oleh karena inilah saya melepaskan kepenatan ini dengan melakukan sesuatu yang saya sukai. Dan saya suka segala sesuatu yang konyol dan menggelitik karena hal-hal ini membuat saya gembira. Keberadaan grup ini menjadi sarana bagi saya untuk menjadi diri saya sendiri. 

Pertanyaannya sekarang adalah, apakah peran saya sebagai antagonis jadi-jadian diterima dengan baik oleh teman-teman? Saya tidak bisa menyangkal bahwa ada beberapa yang tersinggung oleh saya, haha. Kendati begitu, di tahun lalu, ketika saya menghilang beberapa hari karena masalah besar di kantor, ternyata grup merasa kehilangan. Beberapa teman bahkan menghubungi saya secara pribadi untuk mencari tahu, apa sebenarnya yang telah terjadi. Kesimpulannya, saya merasa tersentuh karena grup teman-teman SMA ini ternyata membutuhkan seorang yang menjengkelkan di tengah-tengah mereka...

That Comedy Show

I finished That '70s Show recently, the third sitcom I ever completed so far. At first, because I'd heard about it many times, I thought of having a peek at one episode just to satisfy my curiosity. However, it was so good that I was hooked on it immediately. The casting and characterization were right from the beginning. When the show first started, Eric, Donna, Hyde, Kelso, Jackie and Fez (a foreign kid with an unknown origin, haha) were unbelievably young, they definitely cut it as high school students. That aside, the series actually featured the parents prominently and I was surprised that I was okay with that. In fact, I think the coolest character of the show was Red Forman. I was very much impressed that the bad guy in RoboCop could be that funny. The only problem I had with That '70s Show was how it was marred by the problem of actors leaving the show. Even the main character, Eric Forman, left and only came back for a good 10 minutes on the last episode. Anyway, it was a small issue as compared with the fun I had throughout that '70s ride. 

Since That '70s Show was the third, what was the first, then? Well, I got a long history with sitcom and it was started with Friends. Still the greatest show on earth, I guess. My friend Ardian and I watched it during our college days in Pontianak and it was constantly discussed and heavily referenced in our conversation. I watched the latter half of the series, including the last one, in Jakarta, sharing the fun with my colleague Rusli this time. Then we were Pheng iu, the Teochew version of Friends, and as a bunch of bachelors living together in Singapore, we would spent time watching the rerun of Friends (oh yeah, we reran it ourselves, as I owned the complete set) at night in our living room. Years later, Emily, a name of my favorite character in Friends, ended up as the middle name of my daughter. 

Friends and How I Met Your Mother.

What's so special about Friends that it was deeply entrenched in me? Well, the show was about the hilarious and lovely friends (Joey and Chandler were the funniest, Phoebe was weird, Monica was loud and we rooted for the love story between Ross and Rachel) as they went thru stages in life, certainly something that I could relate with. Another plus point that I always loved from Friends was the friendly hugging, something that we Asians don't normally do. The simple gesture went along way to show that as friends, after things are said and done, we forgive and forget. It was in line with what the theme song was singing about: I'll be there for you.

After Friends, the next one that came into the picture was How I Met Your Mother. While the title might not sound convincing, it did convey the whole premise of the show: one long story about how the titular character, Ted, together with Barney, Robin, Marshall and Lily, met the mother. It was like an updated and modernized version of Friends, with Ted and Robin filling in the shoes of Ross and Rachel. Also worth mentioning is Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson, whose performance was legen... wait for it... dary! He was just awesome, thanks to his over-the-top antics, the Playbook, Bro Code and so forth. He was also inspirational. I mean, only Barney could say stuff like, "when I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead." As crazy as it sounded, I actually laughed and agreed with that. While it didn't say I'll be there for you, it was definitely brimming with optimism.

Now, as I wrote this, I realized that what interesting here is the thin red line among those three. While I was progressing up and down from a bunch of friends who hung out at the cafe, drinking coffee (Friends) to a bunch of friends who hung out at the bar, drinking beer (How I Met Your Mother), to a bunch of friends who hung out at the basement and weren't old enough to drink beer (That '70s Show), the idea behind it remains the same. All of them were about the friendship, the love and the fun in life. If a person's character is ever defined by what one likes, watches and is influenced by, this may explain why I am who I am today...

Pertunjukan Komedi Itu

That '70s Show adalah sitcom ketiga yang saya tonton sampai habis baru-baru ini. Pada mulanya, saya cuma coba-coba satu episode untuk menghilangkan rasa penasaran saya, terutama karena saya sering mendengar tentang serial komedi ini. Setelah menyelesaikan satu judul pertama, ternyata saya malah menjadi ketagihan. Para aktor yang membintangi seri ini sangat pas dalam memerankan karakternya. Eric, Donna, Hyde, Kelso, Jackie dan Fez (pelajar asing yang tidak jelas asal-usulnya, haha) masih sangat muda di awal cerita, sehingga terlihat meyakinkan sebagai murid SMA. Di samping itu, serial ini juga unik karena menampilkan para orang tua secara konstan sebagai bagian dari setiap cerita. Saya tidak pernah melihat yang seperti ini sebelumnya, tetapi saya ternyata menyukainya dan favorit saya adalah Red Forman. Pemerannya adalah orang yang membintangi penjahat di film RoboCop dan saya sangat terkesan bahwa dia bisa melucu dalam perannya yang tegas sebagai seorang ayah. Jika ada kekurangan That '70s Show, maka itu adalah masalah perginya aktor-aktor dari serial tersebut. Bahkan tokoh utamanya, Eric Forman, pergi dan kembali hanya untuk 10 menit di episode terakhir. Untung saja secara keseluruhan ceritanya masih tetap memikat. 

Nah, jika That '70s Show adalah yang ketiga, apa judul sitcom pertama yang pernah saya tonton? Saya telah menonton sitcom sejak puluhan tahun silam, dimulai dari Friends. Sewaktu kuliah di Pontianak, saya dan teman saya Ardian mengikuti serial ini dan kita sering berbagi cerita yang telah kita tonton. Ketika saya pindah ke Jakarta, saya lanjut menonton Friends hingga usai, kali ini bersama Rusli, kolega saya. Setelah itu, sebagai bagian dari kumpulan bujangan yang tinggal serumah di Singapura, kita secara kolektif bahkan sempat memerankan Pheng iu, Friends versi Tiochiu. Di malam harinya, kita akan berkumpul di ruang tamu untuk menyaksikan pemutaran ulang serial Friends (oh ya, kita putar ulang sendiri, karena saya memiliki DVD Friends, satu set komplit). Bertahun-tahun kemudian, saya menamai anak saya Emily berdasarkan karakter favorit saya di Friends. 

That '70s Show di Netflix

Sebenarnya apa yang istimewa dari Friends sehingga serial ini benar-benar mengakar pada diri saya? Saya rasa karena topik yang diangkat, dimana serial ini menyoroti kehidupan enam orang sahabat yang lucu dan benar-benar dekat satu sama lain. Ada Joey dan Chandler yang paling lucu, Phoebe yang nyentrik, Monica yang nyaring dan tentu saja Ross dan Rachel, pasangan ideal. Bersama-sama mereka mengarungi setiap jenjang kehidupan, sesuatu yang tentunya relevan buat saya. Hal lainnya yang menarik dari Friends adalah budaya mereka dalam berpelukan sebagai teman, sesuatu yang jarang dilakukan oleh orang Asia. Saya selalu merasa bahwa cara menunjukkan simpati yang sederhana ini sebenarnya sangat luar biasa dampaknya, dimana setelah kita bersalah baik dalam perkataan maupun perbuatan, kita memaafkan dan melupakannya. Ini juga jelas senada dengan tema yang diusung di lagunya, bahwa saya akan selalu hadir untukmu.

Setelah Friends, yang saya tonton berikutnya adalah How I Met Your Mother. Walau terdengar konyol, judul ini betul-betul mewakili inti dari serial tersebut: satu cerita panjang dimana tokoh utamanya, Ted, bersama-sama dengan Barney, Robin, Marshall dan Lily, bertemu dengan Sang Ibu. Serial ini bagaikan versi baru dan modern dari Friends, dimana Ted dan Robin seperti menggantikan peran Ross dan Rachel. Yang juga wajib disebutkan di sini adalah akting Neil Patrick Harris sebagai Barney Stinson yang legendaris. Dia bukan saja luar biasa lucu di sini, tapi juga inspirasional. Hanya Barney yang bisa berkata, "ketika saya sedih, saya berhenti merasa sedih dan memilih untuk merasa keren." Walau kedengarannya gila, tapi kalau Barney yang berucap, rasanya bisa dimaklumi dan susah dibantah. Dengan segala kekonyolannya, serial ini sungguh terasa optimis. 

Sekarang, selagi saya menulis ini, saya jadi menyadari adanya benang merah antara tiga serial ini. Bermula dari sekumpulan teman yang nongkrong di kafe dan minum kopi (Friends), saya lanjut dengan sekumpulan teman yang nongkrong di bar dan minum bir (How I Met Your Mother) dan sekumpulan teman yang nongkrong di ruang bawah tanah dan masih terlalu muda untuk minum bir (That '70s Show), namun ide yang melatarbelakangi semua ini selalu sama. Semuanya selalu bercerita dengan persahabatan, cinta dan kegembiraan dalam hidup. Jika karakter seseorang sedikit banyak ditentukan dari apa yang ia sukai, ia tonton dan apa yang mempengaruhinya, mungkin ini bisa menjelaskan kenapa karakter saya seperti ini...

The Bizarre Adventure Of Atom-Boy And Uncle-Man (Part 5)

And the mysterious man turned out to be no mystery at all once he was caught. He was Suleiman Usman Kurdi, a Kurdish known as S.U. Kurdi to his friends, more popular and recognized by superheroes as Bomber-Man, specialized in suicide bombing. He wasn’t a bad man, but he had been bullied for being different since he was a kid. For a start, he was an albino, but his childhood bully called him a leper. This was inappropriate, but to kids, it was much more fun to call him a leper and see him cry, so they didn’t bother to call him an albino, let alone show him sympathy. This left a deep scar in his vulnerable feeling, making him fragile and anti-social.

So he sat there in the corner with no friends…

And the insult went on as he grew up. S.U. Kurdi always had a hint of feminism in everything he did, from the way he walked to the way he curled his eyelashes, and it hurt him bad when people mimicked this weakness in front of him. Once he was reduced to tears when his male colleague intentionally walked with his butt shaking like duck ass whilst others burst into laughter.

So he sat there in his cubicle with no friends… 

As if that was not enough, his Alzheimer’s stricken Grandma came up with a gossip about his eyes. S.U. Kurdi’s eyes were so small they looked like those Chinese eyes so on her deathbed, the dying Grandma concocted a story that her daughter-in-law was left by his son and she was so poor that she got no choice but to trade free sex with a bowl of wonton noodle. Nine months after that accursed bowl of wonton noodle was eaten, S.U. Kurdi was born. When S.U. Kurdi disagreed and tried to argue, his Grandma argued back that she never said such a cruel thing about her beloved daughter-in-law. Thanks to her Alzheimer’s, it seemed like she forgot what she just said and she died in peace while her one and only grandson got to live an awful life with plenty of people who secretly stared at him and whispered to each other about his Chinese heritage.

So he sat alone at his grandma’s funeral with no friends…

There was always a certain limit of humiliation that a man could bear and it was this complete set of embarrassment that finally drove S.U. Kurdi mad, so he swore to kill all people that bullied him. But he was unlucky that on his debut as a super villain, he was confronted by Kung Fu. Calm as always, Kung Fu wasn’t scared even though Bomber-Man ripped off his clothes to reveal the bands of dynamites strapped all over his body. Facing the frantic Bomber-Man, Kung Fu just needed to point out one simple fact to him. And he said, “do you realize that when you do suicide bombing, you are the first to die?”

The blatant truth awoke Bomber-Man. He didn’t want to die. He wanted to live, but people never gave him chance. Then the ever-charming Kung Fu told him that was not true. If he wanted to live, he might go to Kung Pao Chicken and Assorted Szechuan Cuisine restaurant and look for Vendy Fendi Lee. This man was an old friend of Kung Fu and he would help him.

Before he left, Kung Fu also said that if Bomber-Man didn’t like his Chinese eyes, he could do something like wearing sunglasses –another simple fact that Bomber-Man never thought of.

“What about LASIK?” asked Bomber-Man, tried to say something smart to in order to cover his stupidity.

“No, that won’t help,” answered Kung Fu bluntly.

And never again Bomber-Man made an effort to outsmart Kung Fu. He knew the man in front of him was a wiser person. Not only that, he was trying to save him by giving him a second chance. So Bomber-Man followed his advice and sought Vendy Fendi Lee for help. The owner of Kung Pao Chicken and Assorted Szechuan Cuisine restaurant welcomed him with open arms, listened to his problem and gave him job. Before long, S.U. Kurdi regained his confidence and with the support of his mentor-like friend, he opened Kurdi’s Kebab and Assorted Kurdish Cuisine restaurant. It did well, so there came the time for him to depart. 

But their friendship continued. From time to time they would have a drinking session and there they would reminisce the past. The last time they had it was last night and today, without a warning, the first thing in the morning that S.U. Kurdi read was the sad news about the death of his best friend…

***

That explained why S.U. Kurdi was peeping through the window today. He wasn’t coming to secretly peek at the uncircumcised stuff –though a shemale personality inside him didn’t mind to see one– he only wanted to make sure whether the news was true or not. However, Atom-Boy still felt suspicious about the fact that S.U. Kurdi ran away the moment he chased him. But S.U. Kurdi has a solid reason for this: he was once a super villain, therefore he would instinctively flee when a superhero ran towards him.

A perfect alibi S.U. Kurdi may have given, but the same excuse has made him the last person Vendy Fendi Lee met before he died. Atom-Boy, who still found it very hard to believe that such a highly regarded hero like Kung Fu would pee himself to death, couldn’t help thinking that this was a lead to another possibility. What if S.U. Kurdi poisoned the victim, undressed him and hid his underwear, peed on him so he got the ammonia smell, put the fake diary to fake the murder, escaped and then returned to the crime scene to pretend as an innocent bystander? The truth was, before he became a respectable man, S.U. Kurdi was mentally disturbed. Who was to say that he was cured? He swore to kill all people when he donned the Bomber-Man costume, so there was always a chance this was a deranged tale of murder where he turned out to be an ungrateful bastard and killed the very person who saved his life and trusted him the most. Didn’t he just admit it himself that he was once a super villain and he would still act like one no matter he tried to behave? So why couldn’t S.U. Kurdi be the suspect? It’s possible!

But for what reason did he kill Vendy Fendi Lee? The guy with mental problem might need no reason to kill, but still, for a victim who laid lifeless with his buttocks bared open, it was very clumsy of Atom-Boy for not asking the coroner to perform an ass autopsy. Now, come to think of it, it might be the case of sodomy. 

Shaking his head with regret, Atom-Boy tried to redeem himself by interrogating the suspect:

Atom-Boy: “So what happened last night?”

S.U. Kurdi: “We drank.”

Atom-Boy: “Then?”

S.U. Kurdi: “We drank again.”

Atom-Boy: “After that?”

S.U. Kurdi: “We opened another bottle.”

And this poor quality conversation could go on forever. Feeling frustrated, Atom-Boy almost thoughtlessly accused S.U. Kurdi as the murderer, but when he searched him, he noticed that the ex-super villain carried a book called A Big Book of the Superheroes’ Secret Origins. The author’s name was pseudonymous, referred to only as Bookmark. Sounded familiar, though.

What book was that? Why did he carry the book at the particular moment like this? When Atom-Boy demanded an explanation, all S.U. Kurdi could tell was somebody had put this book into his doorstep this morning. The title was so interesting it made S.U. Kurdi read it to kill time and distracted his mind when he was on his way to Vendy Fendi Lee’s house. It was from this book S.U. Kurdi knew that Kung Fu and Vendy Fendi Lee was the same person! All the more reason for him to rush there and proved what the book said! Thus he carried it all along. 

Atom-Boy browsed the book and he immediately sweat. All the details were there! Who on earth was the writer again? Bookmark? Why, the familiarity lingered on. But of course! What if, instead of Bookmark, the name was Trademark? That was more like it! He was defeated by Kung Fu, so it only made sense that he wanted him dead. He then killed him and put the blame on this poor guy. Why not?

Surprised by his current larger than life analysis, which was a much better one compared to Uncle-Man’s gibberish and his own earlier rubbish that sounded more like an analysis about an analysis by a certain analyst with a presumably good analytical skill, Atom-Boy thought he would need the book of secret origins in order to continue his investigation. After all, he couldn’t let the book fall into the wrong hand. It would endanger the superheroes community. 

Either he was sincere to help or –if he was guilty– trying to cover his crime by using the book as false evidence, S.U. Kurdi passed it to Atom-Boy without hesitation, although he did ask whether he could write his name as the owner of the book or not –a request that, much to his chagrin, was firmly rejected by Atom-Boy. Then, though Atom-Boy would like to bring S.U. Kurdi to nearest police station, his gut told him that this man was not guilty. Therefore, Atom-Boy paid the cab and asked S.U. Kurdi to go there himself. Afterward Atom-Boy quickly followed the clue that he had deduced just now…

***

Mark, who was no longer Trademark, was forever a patient in the sanatorium. There was good reason why: Kung Fu’s mighty kicks did him a permanent damage, crushing his bones into ashes. Doctors, paramedics, surgeons and even acupunctures had tried very hard to re-calcify his bones, but it was a slow and painful process. It might take him his whole lifetime to recover, hence he was stuck there as an eternal patient.

When Mark knew why Atom-Boy looked for him, he couldn’t stop laughing. So the man who beat him mercilessly had died. Served him right! When Atom-Boy accused him for devising such an evil plan to kill his captor, Mark said he felt honored but frankly speaking, he thought he was not that smart. When Atom-Boy said the book on his hand is the proof, Mark showed him the fact that he couldn’t even find his own hand, let alone to write a book.

As much as Atom-Boy wanted to object, Mark’s words rang true, though. In the poor state he was in right now, he looked more like a bowl of Chinese congee than a human being. His skeletal system was totally gone, so he basically was just a pile of flesh with no bones. His ass could easily be mistaken as his cheek while his cheek could be either side of the buttocks. And as if that was not scary enough, one could see tongue in cheek there. Literally!

Atom-Boy was now out of idea, but still he didn’t trust the archenemy of Kung Fu. Feeling distressed, he failed to see that he might have made a wrong move, so the more he tried, the more mistakes he might make. In his desperate effort to force Mark to confess, he ignored what he had tried to acknowledge before. He dismissed the thought that S.U. Kurdi might be innocent. Instead, he questioned the chance that Mark might pay a ghost writer to write this book and, because he knew their secret identity, he then hired S.U. Kurdi, whose mental state perhaps was still unstable, to kill Vendy Fendi Lee and…

Before Atom-Boy finished his highly unlikely hypothesis, Mark had retorted back, told him in the face he was a bloody fool to think that a once unsuccessful-rapper-cum-unsuccessful-rapist happened to be rich. Mark was definitely penniless. When the anxious Atom-Boy replied that there should be a reason why he was still alive, Mark mumbled that while it was amazing that he lived after what he had gone through, miracle was exactly not the reason why. He was not dead simply because the sanatorium kept him as a bone calcification experiment object #44. That was how pitiful he was.

The last sentence left Atom-Boy wordless. He was shaking because whatever things he believed until a while ago seem like crumbling down now. It was at this moment the cynical Mark accidentally blurted out a valuable suggestion. He said, “if only you could think of somebody who really hated Kung Fu for, I don’t know, fail to save him, probably, so he would go through all the trouble just to get Kung Fu killed and blame the murder on somebody else like me.”

And suddenly everything seemed clear to Atom-Boy: Kung Fu didn’t die because of his own pee. Somebody who killed him wanted Atom-Boy, or whoever who happened to be there, to think that the hero died a humiliating death. That was why the victim died with no underpants. The diary was a fake one, of course, it was made to give an impression that the hero had kept the dark secret for so long.

After that, entered S.U. Kurdi. Because of A Big Book of the Superheroes’ Secret Origins, he was confused by the fact that Kung Fu and Vendy Fendi Lee was indeed the same person. He fitted the scene as a wrong person at the wrong time and the wrong place. The only role of his presence was, thanks to the book that he carried along, he would be the misleading clue that eventually would lead Atom-Boy to Mark. Risky though it might seem, but if this plan didn’t work out, S.U. Kurdi was still a failsafe for the murderer. He was the last person to see Vendy Fendi Lee alive. He was an ex-super villain. He had a mental problem in the past. It was really more than easy to accuse him for the crime that he never did.

And finally, Mark was the victim of the crime. He was the biggest bastard of all before Kung Fu defeated him. He was supposed to be the one who hated Kung Fu the most. It only made sense if he plotted all this to see his nemesis died. After all, why would he, a super villain, deny the dubious fact that he had killed his sworn enemy? It was a proud thing for a criminal. It would reestablish his tarnished reputation. He wouldn’t deny it, not if nothing went wrong. 

But something did go wrong. For such a perfect crime, it had with the single biggest flaw ever: A Big Book of the Superheroes’ Secret Origins, written by Bookmark. 

Except Mark, the alleged Bookmark, never wrote the book. He wouldn’t be able to, even if he wanted to. He didn’t have the knowledge of superheroes’ secret identities. If that was the case, who hated Kung Fu for his failed attempt to save him, knew the secret of superheroes and wanted to blame all this on Mark, formerly known as Trademark?

The suspect was the unsuspected one. Now, come to think of it, it was no coincidence that he found the diary when nobody seemed to be able to find it, because big chance he had brought the diary all along! This confirmed that the only person who could do all this was him…

The End

***

“Well done!” said Wah Wah when she congratulated Willem. 

“Well done!” repeated Mark, but he was actually referring to the steak he ate just now.

And aside from Mark’s, other reviews were pretty much the same as Wah Wah’s, except this one: 

“What? It ends like this? Now that’s confusing,” said Enrico. “I didn’t get it when I read the script and I still don’t get it after I watched the movie. Who’s the killer, anyway?”

***

The front and back cover of Pheng iu (Volume 1)
Image credit: Zhou Xiong Zhen

The Bizarre Adventure Of Atom-Boy And Uncle-Man (Part 4)

It was one lustful and love-consuming wedding night. She unbuttoned me, so I undressed her. She kissed me here, so I touched her there. She spat on my thing, so I sneezed on her stuff. Gross and unhygienic it might seem it made people fail to see how intense it was. So intimate it was the intimacy was intimidating. With a lot of ooh and aah, love couldn’t go wrong.

Or so I thought, before she grabbed my ass.

There was always something there, something as visible as Braille that one could read it simply by feeling it. And I cringed the moment her fingers slithered wildly, clearly following the embossed curves curiously. After that, she stopped and became expressionless. She was busy love-biting me before, so there she was, on the top of my plain and hairless chest, with her eyes stared blankly and lower jaw dropped whilst her tongue stuck motionless on my right nipple. When I opened my eyes, suddenly I didn’t find her attractive anymore. Ugly was more like it.

Just like a man who found it hard to accept that his wife wasn’t a virgin anymore, I could tell from her face that it was extremely difficult for her to digest the fact that her husband’s ass had been deflowered, worse still, by a man. So that was it. With the cryptic words, “too sexy for me to handle,” she excused herself to restroom, escaped from the window and had never been seen since then.

My marriage life ended on my very wedding night. It wasn’t till death do us part. It was… till ass do us part. And I cried myself to sleep. I woke up with one thing in my mind: revenge!

***

Tom Lee Jones was drooling like a retard inside the MRT when the TV program was suddenly interrupted by breaking news. A newsreader was reporting the miserable and humiliating death of Vendy Fendi Lee, the owner of the famous Kung Pao Chicken and Assorted Szechuan Cuisine restaurant. He was found dead with his groin exposed, so the broadcasting people –learning from experience, this time– had to censor his crotch before they started broadcasting live from his deathbed. But the field reporter, a man with a keen reporting instinct who always kept in mind that public has a right to know, did a good job nonetheless. He managed to describe the brutal details such as it had not been circumcised.

The news did have an impact of a rude awakening call on Tom Lee Jones. No, he didn’t care that it wasn’t circumcised. That hardly bothered him. What mattered was he knew the fact that Vendy Fendi Lee was no ordinary man. Not only he was the best Kung Pao Chicken chef ever, he was also the alter ego of Kung Fu! 

Kung Fu was like the greatest superhero ever and now he was dead! So serious this incident was it drove Tom to start thinking again, effective immediately. With saliva still dripping from his mouth and frowning blurry eyes while he was subconsciously lost in thought, he looked scarier than ever, menacing enough to force the passenger next to him to dial the mental hospital and beg for help. 

At the current state, although Tom looked like a thinking imbecile, he actually thought clearly now. Within seconds, he can tell it was very much impossible that a reputable hero died a bottom-half-naked death like this. On the top of that, according to the reporter, nothing was stolen. This convincesdTom that it ought to be a murder case, and big chance that the murderer knew his secret identity!

Suddenly the enthusiasm was too much for Tom to bear. He was fainting, indirectly regaining his blackout sense. Then the thunder roared and Tom transformed. While that was happening, the MRT abruptly shook and was out of control. Just when the train was about to crash and everybody was whispering every prayer in every God’s name in every language –from the ancient Tetragrammaton spelling YHWH to the modern day yelling in English such as Christ!– a somewhat familiar man in one piece skin-tight garment appeared out of nowhere to save the day. At a glance, he did look like a young man with fetishism problem, but the witnesses soon realized that the mysterious character in spandex was Atom-Boy, the long lost superhero! He was back on the track, literally! And nobody did it better than him when it came to catching MRT. He saved the day, but he also called it a day at the same time. Judging from how people expressed their gratitude by cursing, accusing him for sabotaging the train and throwing things at him, it was pain and plain to see that he was still pretty much blacklisted. Ignoring the people he just rescued, Atom-Boy made a quick getaway to Kung Pao Chicken and Assorted Szechuan Cuisine restaurant… 

***

The arrival of Atom-Boy startled everybody. He was an unwanted person that happened to be in the wanted list, so the police wanted to arrest him for being unwanted. But Atom-Boy refused to be taken into custody, arguing with the officers that if they wanted to catch him, they would have to capture Uncle-Man first.

Apparently Uncle-Man had been there for nobody knew how long, so it was quite a surprise to Atom-Boy that they simply ignored Uncle-Man’s presence by letting the uncle-like superhero to be there while they immediately chased him like mad. Being treated unjustly, he had blurted out an unnecessary remark he never meant to say about his peer. It did render them speechless for a while, but the spokesperson from the police force came up with a good answer for this: Enrico was not in costume. He appeared as private investigator, a civilian, so there was no reason to seize him. 

Again, it was quite a surprise to Atom-Boy, because if his eyes weren’t lying, Enrico was as fully clothed as himself: a half-smoked cigarette in his mouth, a singlet that was too short to cover his eerily bloated belly button, khaki shorts that exposed his hairy-sturdy legs as a classic symbol of masculinity, a pair of dirty sandals, complete with fungus-smelled feet and some infectious skin disease in between his toes and, finally, an old newspaper that he tucked under his armpit… for God’s sake, Enrico was Uncle-Man! He was supposed to have an impression of a poor uncle that nobody would take notice, so that was how his bloody costume looked like!

Atom-Boy clenched his fists when the police officers insisted on catching him. Just when things were about to get ugly, Uncle-Man stepped in to negotiate a win-win solution. This he did by revealing the secret that Vendy Fendi Lee was indeed Kung Fu and this he did while picking his nose, as if it was no big deal. They looked him in the eye and he stared back at them, an eye for an eye. After that, he burped innocently like a middle-aged uncle should be. 

The very uncle-next-door persona he impersonated did work like a charm. There was this solitude for quite some time, because everybody was busy digesting what he just said. When Atom-Boy couldn’t help bursting into a wild action by pushing Uncle-Man to the wall and shouting angrily at him for selling Kung Fu out, all people in the room were convinced that what he said was true.

While everybody was in the state of shock, it seemed like there was no way Uncle-Man could dodge the upcoming, skull-shattering punch from the enraged Atom-Boy. Thanks to his big mouth for disclosing a private and confidential secret that should have been brought to the grave, he’d be bringing his big mouth to the grave. But Uncle-Man, like all the uncles in the world who were smarter than all the smart alecks in the world, had something up his sleeve. He pressed his MP3 player and…

“Take a look at me now, there’s just an empty space…” sang Phil Collins in such a melancholy tone.

And that caught Atom-Boy unprepared. Before he realized what happened, the illusion had already begun. One second he had a glimpse of Uncle-Man in his typical unclish face –as opposed to childish face– and next, all Atom-Boy could see was a brokenhearted widower, looked years older than he was supposed to be, with a painfully sad story in his eyes. So strong was the emotional effect it drove Atom-Boy to hallucinate that Uncle-Man was always raped by his fat ugly wife and all he could do in the night was to face the wall next to his bed and shed tears silently while his wife, slept beside him, was busy snoring like a pig. So exhausted he was every day he began to suffer from asthma. But even though he was an asthmatic person, he still had to wash all the dishes. And his fingers were all wrinkle and weak because of the detergent, therefore he couldn’t pee properly on the toilet bowl. Once he urinated on the toilet seat, his wife got angry and raped him again. Dissatisfied because of his short time performance, his wife left him for another man with no peeing and breathing problems, thus he became a widower. 

No man could stand such a miserable vision. Even the strongest heart and wicked mind would break down and cry. When Atom-Boy returned to reality, gone was his anger, replaced by sympathy, empathy and pity. He hugged Uncle-Man, caressed his hair, kissed his cheek and whispered silently into his ears, “it’s gonna be alright.” All disputes were soon forgotten. Their relationship started anew. Together they began to examine the death of Kung Fu.

When the police tried to butt in again, to them Uncle-Man said, “today we mourn a great hero who has passed away. Please show some respect by letting us to investigate.”

And this left them no words to argue. Under those watchful eyes, Atom-Boy checked every single angle and after searching here and there, Uncle-Man managed to find a diary called My Diary, A Man’s Best Friend. He passed the book to his curious partner.

As he received the book, Atom-Boy smiled when he read the title. Not only it revealed the sentimental side of the hero, the very human being in him, but judging from a manly handwriting that blended perfectly well with the girly artefact, one could tell the diary did reflect the yin-yang philosophy of its master. It was a really a legacy that only a hero of Kung Fu’s caliber could leave to the world. While gazing at the book cover with full respect, he took a deep breath. After that, he opened the book with his nervous, trembling hands and started reading…

“January 1^st, 2008. Dear Diary, I wet my underpants…

“January 2^nd, 2008. Dear Diary, I wet my underpants…

“January 3^rd, 2008. Dear Diary, I wet my underpants…”

As he kept reading, Atom-Boy shook his head in disbelief. It was painful to read that even the greatest hero succumbed to a very peculiar and disgraceful weakness. The handwriting, while so neat, engraved the agonizing defeat of the writer. There were visible traces of teardrops on some of the pages and Atom-Boy could only imagine that Vendy Fendi Lee was alone in the dead of night, crying for his shameful habit while jotting down the fact that he wet his pants again. He read on, and the content remained the same until the last page, which was, “Dear Diary, I wet my underpants and die…”

Then Atom-Boy closed the book. He felt so embarrassed for reading such a classified information he now wished he had never opened it at the first place. But more than that, Kung Fu’s last words were both enigmatic and prophetic. How could somebody write a thing like that and die? Did he see this coming?

But Uncle-Man begged to differ. He pointed out the fact that the ink smeared on the last alphabet of the word die. This indicated that he died the moment he finished the last sentence and as he delivered the final pen stroke with his last strength, the pen stayed there for quite a while and leaked. This also explained why he was not wearing underwear when he died. It was because he wet them all. Hypothetically, his death could be described like this: Kung Fu always wet his pants while he was sleeping. With this kind of sleeping habit, he damped his crotch more often than not. As a result, he slowly and unknowingly intoxicated his kidneys, ureter, bladder and urethra with various doses of urea from his urine on daily basis. On that very fateful night, when he woke up to write his diary as usual after he wet his pants again, the damage of the vital organs around his crotch were final and so the last word his managed to scribble before he died was the word die.

No analysis could be more impressive than this. Uncle-Man must be a genius for being able to see the slightest possibility beyond the impossibility or he was just a dolt who babbled about nothing in particular. But Atom-Boy listened only half or may be none of it because he happened to spot a suspicious figure peeping from afar. Without further ado, he quickly jumped out of window to chase the mysterious man…

***

It had been written that, “in case of emergency, break the glass.” Now Atom-Boy understood why a superhero wasn’t no cool superhero if he hadn’t fulfilled his destiny by doing the window-breaking action. He felt the adrenaline rushing the moment he broke the window and jumped out while the glass debris was floating midair and sparkling beautifully under the sun. For a split second, he felt like time stood still. The freedom, the sensation, the excitement, all mixed into one. 

Atom-Boy landed lightly on the ground with his cape covering him from the shattered glass while the people around him, with their mouths forming a full “O” shape as a sign of admiration, were subconsciously applauding for his dashing entrance. Atom-Boy couldn’t help smiling. It was great to know that these people still cheered for superhero in action. It had been a while…

And it could be truer than true that it had been a while since he last became a superhero! With zero activity as Atom-Boy, Tom Lee Jones did less exercising but more eating so when the chase was on, soon the adrenaline was gone. Just because he was strong enough to catch MRT, it didn’t mean that he was built for speed. His heart was pounding fast like the sound of double bass and every breath he took was shortened by every step he made. He panted, and when he started running with his tongue sticking out, he realized the fact that the three layers of fat he now had on his belly was not helping him. He cursed, telling himself that he’d been ambushed by carbohydrate. It put weight on him silently! Prior to this, little did he know that to sleep immediately after eating was equal to sleeping with the enemy!

Meanwhile the target managed to widen the distance between them. Atom-Boy would lose him if he didn’t think of something. And it was this time of all times that he remembered a superhero lesson from Confusion, the omnipotent wizard of might and magic from the Silver Age who clearly imitated the wisdom of the sage from folklore. Confusion once told a tale of a father and a son and the moral of the story was, the more the father told the son not to do so, the more the son tried to do so. As a closure, Confusion also said his now immortalized quote: “he who can’t convince must confuse.”

Couldn’t beat his opponent on the running race, Atom-Boy practiced the teaching of Confusion instead. As a tryout, Atom-Boy ordered the stranger to stop and the stranger ran faster! Atom-Boy told him not to turn right, but turn right he did. That was just great, because Atom-Boy knew where the path led to. Finally Atom-Boy warned him not to turn his head around to look at him, but this the escapee also disobeyed. Thus, unaware that he was running toward a dead-end, he banged the wall and tumbled down. Atom-Boy immediately caught him and…

***

Alternate cover of Pheng iu (Volume 1)
Image credit: Zhou Xiong Zhen

The Bizarre Adventure Of Atom-Boy And Uncle-Man (Part 3)

Tom Lee Jones was a superhero. He was known by his peers as Atom-Boy. Long before he became a superhero, he had an acute fainting fit that enabled him to faint without a warning. He collapsed when he was standing, he fainted when he was sitting, and alas, he even passed out when he was asleep! It happened too often that he seemed like busy spending his life in the state of comatose than being awake. 

He was endowed with an innate talent that he couldn’t be proud of.  For this he didn’t blame anybody, but he did express his feeling by writing in his diary that he was a weakling who tried his best to convince his friends that blackout was the “in” thing, and it could be learnt by loosening the mind control until it had no control at all. So desperate he was to justify his weakness he felt obliged to give a free demonstration three times a day for those who didn’t have the faintest idea what he was talking about. He even went as far as promising to certify those who passed the art of fainting. In his loneliest hours, he would think that he might be a mutant freak with the lousiest power ever, the power of fainting, which could only be cast upon him with no apparent control. 

That was how sad the man was.

This changed when he fainted for one last time while he was on a retreat. In his dream, he met a wise-old-holy man who told him he had hit his blackout quota, and thanks to his good manner of not damning the higher authority for blessing him with such a useless gift, he had passed the temptation and for that he would be rewarded. From that day onward, he would be Atom-Boy, where “A” in Atom-boy had the same function as “a” in the word asexual, which was a prefix to negate the meaning of the word. So Atom-Boy was a double entendre that could be translated literally as a boy who was everything but Tom and tomboy. The linguistics-derived ability granted him the disability of being Tom, his original self, thus prevented him from blackout and bequeathed him with superhuman power instead. 

Coming from a holy man, that was one holy crap, really, but Tom, always a faithful person, sincerely believed him. According to the term and condition that he must sign, he would become Atom-Boy every time his blackout sense was triggered. So he would had this panic attack where he felt like fainting every time there was a danger and the next thing he knew, he had become a hero who, like every other trendy hero would, wore underwear outside his pants. What make his appearance a bit special was he wore a white one (with a very elementary model designed especially for elementary school boy, complete with the inverted Y-shape formed by the seams at the front of the underpants, which allowed easy access to the penis for urination) as a symbol of youth. 

That was how cool the man turned out to be. 

And things got cooler when he made his debut. Always hope that he would make a grand entrance as payback for the mockery he suffered prior to this very defining moment, his wish was permitted by the old holy man. On the very first day of his short lasting career, one MRT (Mono Rail Train) was speeding out of its railway and crumbling down. Just when it seemed like death had come upon, Atom-Boy appeared from nowhere and here he came to save the day. 

Atom-Boy did make an effort to help, but superheroes or not, nobody would exactly know what to do when the speeding train was falling down from the aboveground level. No manual guideline on how to catch a train was ever written before, so experience was what it counted. 

And the experience was zero. Atom-Boy tried to catch the train from below, so it only made sense that the MRT landed exactly onto him, crushed him to the ground, exploded and everybody died. 

But Atom-Boy didn’t give up. He tried time and again until he achieved the sixth sense called déjà vu, a super sense that reminded him this thing happened before every time he faced a speeding train. This brought back the memory of his failure and he improved by not making the same mistakes anymore. 

After losing his grip and footing on countless occasions, the grave mistakes that caused a series of MRT explosions with all passengers being sent to meet their maker before time, he finally honed his rescuing skill. And there came the time when he made a successful attempt. For that single proud moment, he was billed in the newspaper as A Man Who Redeems Himself, the first positive publication he got after some disappointing headlines such as An Idiot Who Lets People Die or A Superhero Who Kills More Than A Super-Villain. 

Since then, as crazy as it might seem, many people, especially teenage girls, would expect the MRT to crash so they would have a chance to see the superhero that specialized in saving MRT. And Newtown City MRT Corporation took advantage by promoting its service as the safest monorail train in the world, thanks to Atom-Boy. As a result, the leading transportation company honored the hero by giving him an unofficial but more matured and profitable name for the company’s sake, MRT-Man. 

It was at the height of Atom-Boy’s popularity as MRT-Man that the bloody battle between Trademark and Kung Fu occurred. The fight was coincidentally captured by a surveillance camera and when it was proudly presented as “on screen for the first time” by the Seven O’Clock News, all hell broke loose. 

The scene where Trademark molested Uncle-Man alone was powerful enough to drive the TV viewers crazy. Watching how the scene switched from the newsreader’s smiley face to a close up of an ass covering ¾ of TV screen, regardless it was widescreen or not, was a mind blowing experience. It took the TV viewers at least three seconds before they realized the big black dot on their screens was actually an asshole. But the best was yet to come. Suddenly there was a hand touching the buttock. Nobody touched people’s butt like that and Trademark did it perfectly well. The effect was… majestic. Those who watched it were soon in tears. Never in their lives did they ever think they would live to see a sexual harassment scene that was so artfully crafted and beautifully done. When the hand was lifted up, revealing a handprint with wording “molested by Trademark, your trusted partner in molesting,” they smiled and clapped happily. They agreed that it was the grandest closure ever.

And it was as though they were being taken from their dreams when the footage changed to Kung Fu in action. It was so quick. TV viewers only saw a blurry image of Kung Fu. The martial art superhero jumped and kicked. Afterward, the blood was flowing top-down and TV screen turned red. 

Everybody awoke, then they realized that it was seven o’clock. It was a prime time, the perfect timing when parents and children would watch TV together. What a shame that this kind of show was broadcasted at this very hour! Not only there was no early warning such as parental guidance required, but also an ass, together with an asshole, was shown in its full-fledged glory. Those broadcasting people should have done something to censor it, something like what they did on Japanese porn. 

People were angry with those guys who worked on TV station for their carelessness on censorship, but they were angrier with superheroes. They were horrified, to be precise. And there was one good reason for this: it had been a stereotype since the golden age that superheroes were cute and cuddly, so it was way too much for public to accept that the world of superheroes these days, most of the time, were rough and rowdy. 

Public still remembered very well that not so long ago, Porcupine Djung was running loose on the street as the Fast. He was the younger brother of Dragon Djung, the legendary hero, and yet he became a super-villain instead of following in his brother’s footsteps. With this in mind, came a very good question: They had so much power, if they went berserk, who watched the watchmen?

The answer was nobody. That was the fact, and that was one scary fact.

And Kung Fu, of all the things he might fail to do, he didn’t smile when he kicked Trademark. This only confirmed what they feared the most. People then started to assume that this meant he wasn’t as friendly as what they used to think. When Kung Fu said that was his fighting expression, people started calling him arrogant. When Kung Fu was forced to smile on public, people said he looked like a sadist.

Whatever Kung Fu said and did, he just couldn’t win. They were putting him down. They were all scared and started complaining. There was a big campaign against superheroes going on at that time, but it was the fashion critics, as radical as ever, that raised the biggest issue of all by shouting the loudest, “and most importantly, what the hell exactly it is in their mind when they decide to run here and there in their skin-tight costumes? The costumes are so tight that one can practically see their genital shapes printed clearly on their costumes. It’s a porno action, for goodness’ sake! They better wear underwear down there!” 

And that was the last straw. The footage did prove that Uncle-Man wore no underwear when he was molested by Trademark. To make the matter worse, Uncle-Man, when he was being interviewed in the hospital, bluntly admitted that he also didn’t wear underwear when he was sleeping because he liked the spacious and windy feeling around his groin. He was very proud of that stupid little fact he started telling the media that his message for the upcoming Christmas was, “stop wearing underwear and give peace a chance.”

When the statement –together with the picture of Uncle-Man grinning an innocent-cum-idiotic smile while making peace sign by V-shaping his fingers– was published on the gossip tabloid, it critically damaged the reputation of superheroes. Every element in the society agreed that superheroes had done more harm than good. Thus, once the rule was set and the regulation was approved, it was finally declared that the heyday of superheroes was over. To add insult to injury, a special task force to handle superheroes was formed to support this new act. 

It hurt to see how those people cheered for the fact that government had taken serious actions against superheroes. Never thought that the same people he once swore to protect would oppose his very existence, Kung Fu felt that his trust and confidence had been betrayed. He renounced his superhero career. Spider-Fatman would be the second to go. And Uncle-Man, well, he had been long gone with his secret identity revealed, thanks to nationwide broadcast of his British arse. 

With all of them quitting, Atom-Boy became the last active superhero in town. He climbed up to the top of the wanted list in no time because he was the only one left on the list. With this kind of achievement, his popularity went downhill, from hero to zero. Furthermore, Newtown City MRT Corporation, in order to save the company image, quickly did a business maneuver by distancing themselves from Atom-Boy. They called him Non-MRT-Man to emphasize that the company had nothing to do anymore with the fallen hero. In their effort to gain public’s trust, they accused Atom-Boy of sabotaging the train with the intention of staging his signature entrance. This move was proven to be very popular in the public eye and further alienating the lonesome superhero.

And the pressure was taking its toll. Tom Lee Jones gulped a mouthful of pills since then, not to commit suicide, but only to drug himself so he became dull and dull he did become, so dull he was one couldn’t really tell whether he looked stupid or idiot. The drug influence rendered his blackout sense senseless, therefore he couldn’t kick in to superhero mode. With Atom-Boy nowhere to be seen, superheroes were finally no more…  

***

Tom Lee Jones’ resignation marked the beginning of the modern period, an era where superheroes were banned. It seemed like the end, with only one or two of them, such as Bodhi, operating underground to carry on the legacy of superheroes.

Bodhi was just a college student when the famous Shit-Man made a pledge of picking up all the shits on the riverside, but thanks to his intensive study, he now called himself Cyber-Man and roamed the cyber world to fight for justice while Shit-Man, now wore no costume and was largely forgotten, was still picking up endless shits on the riverside. 

While newcomers like Bodhi coped with the current situation, those long time players were trying their very best to live as normal people. Some lived peaceful lives, but some simply couldn’t find peace. They used be in action out there, watched by millions of hungry eyes that admired them, so it was plain to see why they felt very much useless now. They clearly missed the excitement and it didn’t take long before they started doing anything to get the excitement back. If sacrificing the reputation were all it took, then a sacrifice it would be. 

Spider-Fatman is a good example of this casualty. Gone were the days when he was an agile fat man in spider costume who got the abilities to attach on the wall and rely on his sticky web as a weapon. He now relied on world wide web instead. With his natural built pocking device, he attached himself onto woman’s body and there he would be for the next fifteen minutes, campaigning the slogan make love, not war via internet. So there he was, out there in action once again, stared by the eyes of the admirers. And while other people needed to pay the price for the excitement, he was actually making money from the pay-per-view online payment system. 

But it was a sad fact, really, to see the one that was once idolized by millions, now was only idolized by perverts. But life went on. Little did the olden superheroes know that they would return for one last time…

***

The limited edition bookmark during the launch of Pheng iu (Volume 1)
Image credit: Eve Pll

The Bizarre Adventure Of Atom-Boy And Uncle-Man (Part 2)

With Mark on board, it was easy to enlist another housemates. It was either they joined them voluntarily or they gotta suffer the consequence. Take Porcupine Djung as an example. He learnt it the hard way and finally accepted the offer when he was told by the very cool Mark that the last person who dared to say no to him died the next day. As if that was not intimidating enough, Mark even warned him if there was a slightest chance that person didn’t die the next day, then he must be dead the day after tomorrow. And the silly Porcupine Djung, already scared the shit out of himself, didn’t dare to ask furthermore what will happen if the person didn’t die the day after tomorrow. Little did he know that person actually lived happily ever after because he didn’t die the day after tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Robin was developing some basic ideas that he’d been discussing with Willem. He managed to deliver the script before the deadline because there was no deadline. According to his script, Tom Lee Jones was the super strong Atom-Boy, Enrico was the enigmatic Uncle-Man and Mark was Trademark, the perverted evil man. These were the three main characters. There were many more, although some of them were just cameos.

When the shooting was commenced, it was an all-new experience to everybody. Willem, always a natural leader when it came to movie making, was doing well in directing, but none of the others was an actor or actress. They were so nervous they kept giggling from time to time. This infuriated Willem, never failed to trigger him shouting, “no teeth are allowed! No teeth are allowed!”

Robin, who sat behind the camera, certainly wouldn’t miss his chance to take part in this riot. When this happened, he wouldn’t hesitate to show some moral support to the director. Polishing Willem’s original line into something that was typically his, he would yell to the stars, “no tits are allowed! No tits are allowed!”

And after three months of “no tits are allowed,” they finally finished the movie. It took another two months to do the post-production job, but after that, it was time to attend the premiere!

On the very night, the living room was very much alive. It was a chatty night, to be precise, with everybody busy chatting and ignoring the director’s speech. Mark, claimed that he was drunk because he drank too much Cock (the abbreviation of Cock-Up Cola, a carbonated non-alcoholic soft drink), was asking where he could he put his handprints while his two hands were facing Wah Wah’s chest, waiting for an approval.

But it wasn't Wah Wah if she couldn’t disapprove Mark’s naughty request. Always a smart girl, Wah Wah rejected the idea politely by saying, “but Mark, my parents don’t raise me so that one day you can put your hands on my chest.”

“Strange, then,” answered Mark, trying his best not to look stupid, “because it seems like my parents raise me so I can put my hands on your chest.”

“If that’s the case, I’ll call your mother to confirm,” said Wah Wah calmly.

She picked up her phone and Mark, now looked stupid without even trying to look stupid, panicked and was begging on his bended knees, asking Wah Wah to show some mercy.

“Gotcha! Stupid Mark, I don’t even know your mother’s phone number.”

And those who watched the battle of wits were laughing.

After that humorous prelude, the silence befell. Everybody paid attention to the screen. The Bizarre Adventure of Atom-Boy and Uncle-Man was now showing for the first time…

***

There was a time when superheroes walked among us. They walked, sometimes they ran if they were in hurry, simply because they couldn’t fly. But still, although they all lacked of gravity-defying power, it was so much fun to have just a glimpse of them. It somehow gave us hope, because we all knew it took a lot of courage to don underwear in front of their colorful skin-tight costumes. One with an analytical mindset could only wonder how difficult it would be if the so-called superhero needed to pee in such a troublesome outfit like that.

Apparently, being a superhero was a tough job. Not only because they didn’t make money for their good deeds or sometimes people would forget to say thanks, but also, with a daily problem of peeing, it was almost confirmed that sooner or later they would suffer from kidney problems.

Despite of the major health issues (kidney failure sure would cause financial difficulties), they still became superheroes, no matter what the risk was. It didn’t mean that they didn’t care for themselves, but there was this noble reason that drove them to fight till finish or die trying: they believe that whatever they did, they did it for a greater good.

Dragon Djung was the first superhero to appear. According to A Big Book of the Superheroes’ Secret Origins by the alleged Bookmark, Djung was an unknown –as opposed to renown– martial artist who starred in a low-budget movie called Exit the Dragon. Djung was labeled by a local gossip tabloid as Short Dragon because that was how he looked like. Alas, he was also fat, not fit. His big and bloated tummy was absolutely no six-pack. Family pack was more like it. Last but not least, as if to complete his series of unfortunate events, he was sued by a famous video game company for unwittingly naming his fighting style Nin Ten Do. 

Far from the superheroes heyday where those daredevil superheroes would run publicly in their tight and bright costumes with devil-may-care attitude regardless something taboo was obviously protruding, Dragon Djung was more of a vigilant type, which meant he ambushed and ran. And run he sure would, especially when the enemy carried a knife or dagger. He was also quite primitive in the sense of fashion, which meant he liked to be seen topless so he could show his flabby chest and obese belly. But then again, it suited the era. It was a simpler time and so simple it was that the enemy with the tattoo of a scorpion on his biceps was considered as the fiercest and if he smoked, it was absolutely confirmed that he represented evil.

After what the history chronicler called 'the stone age of superheroes' ended, came the golden age. It was in this period when the term “superheroes” was coined to those super young men. Unlike Dragon Djung, they really had a super-ability or two. 

Shit-Man was the great example of the tame-n-lame superheroes of this era. As an environmental hero, Shit-Man was gifted with super-powers such as looking at other people’s shit without fear, holding shit without feeling dirty and eating shit without hesitation. Physically, his stomach was as strong as septic tank so it was okay for him to eat shit. To emphasize his glorious features, he even wore a super close-fitting costume called T-Shit with a shit crest on his chest!

His greatest achievement had been told many times since then. So there was this person who shitted on the river and there was that boy who brushed his teeth by the side of the same river. The shit came out from that guy’s ass and flowed towards the boy. Never realized that the danger was approaching, the boy was about to take the water to rinse his mouth. Lucky for him, Shit Da Bao, the door-to-door perfume salesman, was somewhere nearby. He anticipated the disgusting incident by acting more disgusting than the disgusting incident itself: he shitted the costume out from his asshole and wore it straightaway. Soon after, it was Shit-Man to the rescue! He quickly jumped to the river and ate the shit. The boy saw what he did and then thanked the superhero for saving his life. Like all superheroes would, Shit-Man told him it was no big deal. 

Enchanted by the heroic action, the boy said he wanted to be like him one day.

And Shit-Man encouraged the boy by telling him to eat shit.

The poor little boy was discouraged instead. To eat vegetable was one thing, but to eat shit? That didn’t sound too promising. If he ate shit, what would he become? A lousy sidekick who called himself Shit-Boy? On the second thought, becoming a doctor or a lawyer seemed like a better idea.

Nevertheless, Shit-Man did become a headline. And his memorable quote was, “have you eaten shit today?”  

So that was one nostalgic moment of golden age. It was a nicer time. Things got darker after that. Seeing how these supers were so restricted by their so-called responsibilities when they actually could achieve more for themselves with their powers, some would think the idea 'with great power comes no responsibility' sounded much more entertaining. This, in time, turned them into the super-villains.

And so began the silver age. Porcupine Djung was the first to commit crimes. He was the Fast, the fastest porcupine alive. That was the coolest title a man in the porcupine costume could get and he could consider himself lucky. As a comparison, once there was a man who was accidentally doused by carrot juice right in his eyes when a blender machine exploded, so he got himself an excessive dosage of vitamin A and acquired an extraordinary eyesight. With his super-vision, he then donned a carrot-like costume and started calling himself Carrot-Man. His first good deed was to tell an old woman in the bus stop that bus number 67 was coming from afar. But for his good deed, did people call him the greatest prophet alive? No, they simply called him crazy and had him locked up in a mental hospital at once.

But the Fast, the fastest porcupine alive… the name rang true! He ran faster than the Olympic gold medal sprinter on steroids, so he surely faced no difficulty when he had to get away from cops. Furthermore, he could leave a trail of thorns by shedding the spikes on his back in order to stop them from chasing him with cars. He seemed unstoppable, until Enrico –a young police officer who liked to slack and went to smoke during working hours– happened to watch the footage of the Fast on and on in order to act busy when what he really wanted was just to kill time. After rewinding the tape for who knew how many times, he suddenly realized that they actually still could see the Fast when he ran. 

“That’s it! That’s the key. It’s not like, now you see him, now you don’t. He’s not that fast,” said Enrico when he called up a meeting. “We still can see him, we only can’t catch him. The point is, he’s not faster than a speeding bullet.”

And Porcupine Djung was crippled with a single shot, pleaded guilty and ended up in jail for nobody cared how long. As for Enrico, it was because of his brilliant deduction the police force managed to capture the Fast. He was about to be promoted, but he resigned instead and started his career as Uncle-Man, the super spy who looked like an uncle, a master of acting blur and eavesdropping. On his debut as a private investigator, Uncle-Man targeted the biggest bastard of them all, Trademark.

Trademark, formerly known as Mark, was a rapper-cum-rapist. So there was this girl who didn’t want to listen to him rapping, so he raped her instead. But shame on him, he found out that he couldn’t rape a girl for he was impotent. That was when he realized that with great desire, it was important no to be impotent. But it was too late. The damage was done. He was so humiliated he got no choice except to humiliate the one who humiliated him. From that moment onward, he became Trademark, the impotent bastard who left a handprint on the girl’s right breast as an important trademark that this girl had been manhandled by a man with a manhood problem. And every girl who fell victim to this abuse suffered from a terrible trauma because they felt the complete humiliation of being raped by a man who couldn’t even achieve full erection, let alone performed raping.

And Uncle-Man was close to his target, so close he was he himself became the target because Trademark had realized that he had been followed by Uncle-Man for quite some time. The two were having a showdown and Uncle-Man, always looked more like an uncle than a fighter, was helpless and being cornered in no time. The only reason why he could dodge Trademark’s trademark of right boob squeezing was simply because he had no boobs. Missed not by an inch but by a measurement of D cup size, Trademark determined to grab Uncle-Man’s fat British arse instead this time. He confronted Uncle-Man again, but just when Trademark was about to imprint his trademark, Kung Fu, the martial artist superhero, came to Uncle-Man’s rescue.

Kung Fu jumped into the fighting scene. When he was airborne, he executed each and every kicking style that was ever created under the sun. The result was damn frightening. Not only the kicks were randomly flashing here and there, they were also swirling like a tornado from time to time. So dangerous his kicks were he managed to drive Trademark away from Uncle-Man…

Or so it seemed. It wasn’t Trademark if he let Uncle-Man go easily. He acted as if he was scared and about to run for his life, but at last minute, he grinned and grabbed Uncle-Man’s right butt as strong as possible, covering Uncle-Man’s blue birthmark by putting his handprint on the top of it! 

Always a perverted perfectionist with a classy taste when it came to scandalizing an ill-fated ass in a way that the owner would never imagine, Trademark also engraved a permanent inscription inside his handprint, stating clearly that this butt had been, “molested by Trademark, your trusted partner in molesting.” And as a good closure, he also left a lifetime warranty card, stating that a splendid time was guaranteed for all.

The most unpredictable and uncivilized happening happened too fast. There was no way Kung Fu could prevent that. By the time he kicked his way in, Uncle-Man’s ass had been screwed big time and Trademark, knowing that he couldn’t escape, had prepared himself for the worst. He laughed when the first kick landed on his body and he still laughed when the last kick sent him flying in the air.

Trademark fell down. Every single bone in his body was crushed. Even his teeth were reduced into calcium powder when he tried to smile. The super-villain was finally defeated. But did Kung Fu really win? No, although he beat the snot out of Trademark, it didn’t change the fact that he failed to save Uncle-Man. In the end, it was Trademark who had the last laugh… 

***

The unused artwork of Pheng iu

Image credit: Zhou Xiong Zhen