Showing 1 - 10 of 27
Old boyz n the Charoen Krung hood
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 04/08/2018
» The boys once ruled Charoen Krung Road -- the boyz from the hood, sons of Chinese merchants and Muslim roti-makers, rough-around-the-edges teen bred and drilled in the network of sois, who leapt into the Chao Phraya every evening and caught catfish when the river swelled every November, who roamed Bang Rak market when it was still sludgy with vegetable scraps and sneaked into the Prince Rama Theatre when it was still showing, err, adult movies.
Time to let Wild Boars roam freely
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 14/07/2018
» If nature was mother, the cave the womb, the divers the midwives, then the 12 boys and their football coach have experienced a rebirth -- the strangest rebirth because, held captive inside the wet catacomb for 18 days, they were reborn after escaping death by the skin of their teeth.
Taking an axe to 'Land of Smiles'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/02/2018
» By now it must be obvious: "The Land of Smiles" is a myth. The biggest myth, wrapped in a legend hidden in hogwash. In Thailand, a smile won't get us anywhere, only an axe wielded in rage does. I bet in a few days a new bumper sticker will appear: "Watch Out, Axe Lady In Car".
Writing’s on wall for our democracy
Oped, Kong Rithdee, Published on 27/01/2018
» The other day I saw some graffiti in a public toilet. It read, ars longa, vita brevis. Art is long, life is short, as the popular translation goes. Like a street artist, I decided to vandalise it, scratching out and changing the first bit with my poor Latin: dictatura longa, vita brevis. Dictatorship is long, life is short.
Show must go on to save Scala cinema
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 06/01/2018
» Urban conservationists, architects, archivists, cinema-goers, and all-round romantics have united for one cause: Save Scala.
The Faustian promise in a blaming game
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 16/12/2017
» Through a tangled web of pride, vanity, moral superiority, Nietzschean negativity, Faustian promises and pseudo-Jedi cool, the junta keeps to its playbook by blaming everyone except themselves.
It's always sunset in our land of exiles
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 30/09/2017
» Either to Dubai or London, Yingluck Shinawatra has gone West and will likely live the rest of her life in exile. Either in an Emirati villa overlooking the Persian Gulf or a London penthouse by the Thames, she may be contemplating the difference between exile and banishment, or between exile and a holiday, but in the end it doesn't matter: She has fled, and her flight means the old power of Thailand has seen off the element regarded as threat. The ghost has been exorcised, the devil purged -- not once but twice, since there are two Shinawatras -- and now the military will charge ahead on their black horses as they gather us up and gallop us off into sunset (not sunrise).
When art imitates life in the South
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 12/08/2017
» Suhaidee Sata is an artist from Pattani whose art pieces include charcoal sketches of guns used by security officials in the deep South. "This is M16a1," he pointed at one drawing. "This is M16a2. This is M4. And this is AK47."
Where lies the spirit of democracy?
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 24/06/2017
» What do we have to commemorate this week?
First they came for those who 'twerk'
News, Kong Rithdee, Published on 17/06/2017
» The police this week visited several cultural spaces, to appreciate the art and to mete out censorship. Next they'll give out art prizes -- to those who toe the line and serve the official ideology -- like the propagandistic communist states did in the last century.