May 2004

What's A Gov. Pawn Star?

April 15, 2004 - a day after the death anniversary of both Joey Ramone and Jean Genet, a day before the birthday of the late Dusty Springfield, and five days before $ingapore's rail-underground dug itself into a collapse just behind the Thai-haunt Golden Mile (Woh Hup Complex). It was the day that my band Zircon Gov. Pawn Starz's debut album, Follywood, was officially released.

The record company that distributed our album had panicked just two weeks before the release-date, suggesting that we create an outer jacket for the CD's packaging just so that the cover-art - a crest bearing our band's name - would remain veiled. That's how boxed-in paranoid a people we are. Even a lawyer-friend expressed grave concern about the "controversial look" of the crest. All it took was a quick flip through a book on crests to convince me that our Zircon crest looks just like 145 other crests out there - from Yardley to Basement Jaxx.

A Today writer remarked that on "the cover of Follywood... there's an adaptation of the $ingapore crest" (April 24, '04). Whatever gave him that idea, I wonder. Now, now... no wonder even the SM now talks of thinking out of the box.

With a people of unquestioning minds, it seems that no one is asking what's Zircon Gov. Pawn Starz anymore. You know how scary that is? Have they finally got our name figured out? The "funniest" comment I got was from a hip-looking local bar-chick who said that when she first heard it mentioned, she imagined the pawn to be spelt p-o-r-n. She told me that pawn just sounds so HDB! Of course, she's right!

By the way, if like most unquestioning $ingaporeans, you also possess that national trait of being fault-finding and have discovered a typo on our album-cover (quick, go look again, it's there)... What can I say? It's an honest mistake!

Here are my 10 definitions of what a "Gov. Pawn Star" is (first explained to New Man magazine last June):
01. One willing to sign on the dotted line of a monopolistic corporation serviced by a grandly thorough system of fake competition.
02. One compelled to perform at national charity events, thus adding new meaning to the expression - giving one's all to publicity stunts.
03. One who fulfills a "societal" role of endorsing/modeling for public campaigns, other than being an entertainer/performer purely to enhance celebrity-status unto oneself.
04. Would never be caught dead (or alive) smoking in public.
05. The crème de la crème of such a one naturally begets the king (no, queen) of all groupies, David Gan, as groupie-stylist and prized bosom-pal. Or, the only time when "mommy" knows best (otherwise, father-paternal always knows better - and don't he or she ever forget it!).
06. His or her bosses are industry-honchos without a scandalous past. Never mind that it's show business, but it's got to have 'germ-free absolescence* (sic)'. (* absolving in obsolescence).
07. One who doesn't rock 'n' roll but looks ripe for Chinese MTV. In other words, crass desperately looking for class, thinking that cheap glitz is all it takes.
08. A TV game-show filler/fodder.
09. Very likely a cover-star of TV-lifestyle weeklies and especially if photographed for the cover of the latest must-have wedding pictorial or parenthood rag.
10. Is in denial of being a state-controlled pawn-star. (Boy, it's wonderful to be naïve!)

PS. Pity that some sweet liver-giving darlings have to allow themselves to be sucked into the whole pawn-empire too just to simply make a living; not to mention those with a real humanistic cause and are NOT STUPID! Otherwise, how to be a "star" in a control-freak system? - X'Ho