Here are Hong Kong, Honestly, we like to focus on you, the deserving budding Hong Kong professional.

Now, have you noticed how some people seem to get ahead in the industries you long to be in?
Feel like you're being left behind?

WELL FEAR NOT!

We've been working hard to discover what it takes to make it in the vibrant city of Hong Kong...

THE HK, HONESTLY GOLDEN TICKET!!

That's right folks, for a nominal fee we'll print your custom made golden ticket to the stars.

"What is the GOLDEN TICKET?" We hear you ask.

Settle down, settle down, you'll get your hands on it soon enough.

It's a simple namecard, you know, the type those successful people at the top of the ladder have handed you out of pity.

The secret we've found is that your achievements don't determine your name card,
NO SIR!
The truth is you can put WHATEVER YOU WANT on a namecard and bingo! You're in!

"But what about experience and education in my chosen field?" You ask?

Don't be silly, this is HONG KONG!
No where else in the world can you get away with such bare-cheeked lies (well, here at HK, Honestly, we like to call it 'magic').

In Hong Kong, you've got the card, you've got the job.

You see, everyone's at it!

No one will question you because if they do that, there's a chance you'll question them!

You'll be smiling at cocktail parties in no time - everyone aware of the unspoken 'magic' that's fueling the empty vessel of Hong Kong social and work life.

"But HK, Honestly, the GOLDEN TICKET sounds too good to be true! How can I realisically get away with it?" You ask.

That's easy! Our tests have shown that once people have the cards, they easily slip into the world of openings and networking, soon you'll believe your lies ('magic') yourself!
You can truely lose yourself with an HK, Honestly GOLDEN TICKET.

"That sounds great! How do I get one?"

Well, all you need to do is provide us with these basic details.

Your name.

Your DREAM JOB (please note, corporate jobs fall under a different category, the best jobs for the golden ticket we've found are website owner, writer, artist, DJ, model, event planner, PR and marketing but hey! it's your dream job - go crazy! You'll believe it in no time. Hell, a lot of our clients don't even go with their dream jobs, they just turn hobbies into status and cash! Have a fleeting interest in something? Jot it down and we'll turn you into an expert in no time.

Your telephone number
Your email address.

And that's it! It's that easy!

Please be aware that you're not restricted to just one title or even one industry!
Oh no, sir. Look around Alive Not Dead for ideas, you'll see that most people have 4 or 5 areas of "expertise" (that's that old GOLDEN TICKET 'magic' working again!)

Once we've recieved these details and a postal order or cheque, within 4-6 weeks your GOLDEN TICKETS will be printed and you'll be rubbing shoulders with the movers and shakers in the minor industries in no time.
Who knows, you might even see yourself on the gallery of Lifestyle Asia! The sky's the limit!*

*Please note that the GOLDEN TICKET is only valid in Hong Kong. Outside the city people will realise what a talentless, useless liar you are and to leave the city with the GOLDEN TICKET could, if you've any soul left, cause you to re-evaluate your life and trust us, you won't like what you see.

(The advertisment was adapted from a cigarette ad, an industry that amazingly seems less destructive than the wave of useless fucks bumbling around this city, masquerading as important, talented and successful under a veil of disgusting ego and a detached lack of reality.)

We all know what happened when prime cock Kanye West took the microphone from Taylor Swift, but that was a while ago yet still some imbeciles insist on talking about it as if it matters.
So to put an end to it, here’s the HK, Honestly take on the con, sorry, the events.

First things first – here’s some history.

Remember a while back at the MTV Movie Awards when Sacha Baron Cohen (aka Ali G, Borat & Bruno) landed on Eminem’s face? Here are some headlines from the following days:

“Eminem’s Fury At Sacha Baron Cohen’s MTV Movie Award Prank” – The Sun.
“Eminem Walks Out Of MTV Movie Awards After Bruno Prank” – Hollywood.com

Etc. etc.

Of course, it wasn’t real – it was all staged as was revealed later and as anyone with any common sense would have thought straight away.

Eminem is signed to Shady Records which is under Interscope which is owned by Universal.
Bruno is funded and released by Universal.

Eminem had been away from the limelight for a while but had his new album coming out – the release of Cohen’s movie Bruno was also impending.

Cue loads of free publicity, headlines and Internet hype.

See where I’m going with this?

Another MTV event, another shitty Internet-smattering nonsense stunt.

Kanye West is (inexplicably) signed to Def Jam records which is owned by Universal.
Taylor Swift is (predictably) signed to Big Mountain records which is owned by Universal.

Kanye West has become a global joke so no one’s going to be surprised when he does something silly, he’s the perfect puppet and headline maker. He also features on Jay Z’s new (shit) single ‘Run This Town’ with star punch bag Rhianna.

Taylor Swift is big in America – outside of there who’s heard of her? Last week, no one. This week – everyone.

Double win – they’re both everywhere!

Now, Jay-Z, Rhianna and Kanye West were set to perform on the first episode of Jay Leno’s new show, the imaginatively titled ‘The Jay Leno Show’.

After the event, headlines ran along these lines ‘Kayne West Appearance To Go Ahead On Jay Leno Show’.

All of a sudden people who didn’t care about the debut show (which was described by ABC before the event as ‘Jay Leno's Show Last-Ditch Gamble for NBC’) were going to tune in to see what West had to say about the event.

So, tune in they did and it pulled 18.4 million viewers. Kanye’s chat about the event was then circulated worldwide via headlines and online, along his performance of the forthcoming single.

So Leno gets the viewers he needs to please the network and advertisers and there’s extra publicity for the new single and again for Ms Swift.

But that’s not all!

Twitter, the ego-SMS machine or celebrity desperation despatch (pay attention to me L) has been awash with celebrity ‘tweets’ about the event.

Whether these twats (is that the word? twitters?) care or not this is the perfect way to get column inches and some free publicity.
Whenever anything happens you can bet there’s a million agents calling their clients saying ‘tweet some shit about this’ because nowadays journalists are lazy and the public are idiots, meaning it’s perfectly acceptable to make a feature about so-and-so’s 170 character rant.
It fills space, takes no effort and it's civilisation’s next step to total fucking decay.

So that’s the HK, Honestly party line – don’t believe the hype, to quote Public Enemy.
(As an aside, if you were listening to Public Enemy instead of Kanye West in the first place we wouldn’t be in this mess).

If all of the above is the ramblings of a cynical madman and it is all true, seriously -
WHO THE FUCK CARES.

Let’s let celebrities impress us with their talents, it’s about time people were called to prove themselves again.

That won’t happen of course so let’s see what happens at the next MTV Awards and then write about it forever until all our problems go away.

 

Alive Not Dead “official artist” Ghee Rhee’s latest blog details how the Sundance Film Festival has announced a brand new category for “low and no budget films”. To HK, Honestly this translates as little more than a YouTube category and a cinematic equivalent of an amateur battle of the bands competition.

Sundance has a long history of breaking new talent but, bar Kevin Smith’s maxed out credit-card self production, Clerks, every independent film showcased has been studio funded. Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs was the talk of Sundance ’92 but it got made because the script was good, so after touting it his talent was recognised and $1.5 million was raised to produce it. Every other hit has the same story of hard work and raw talent. Surely if after years of hawking your crap with no one biting, maybe it’s just crap.

Hard work and talent gets breaks. We can’t all be superstars. Not every hobby leads to fame.