The Biggest Assholes of 2007

1) Saudis:
OK so maybe not Saudi people, but the Saudi government are definitely big on the list. These assholes are probably the only thing in the world Pakistanis and Americans can agree to collectively suck up too while they support terrorism and raise oil prices. Muslim brotherhood my ass. But that is not the sole reason for their asshole-ness. They recently "pardoned" a rape victim for getting raped. This is several months after they threw her in jail for getting raped in the first place, claiming she shouldn't have been alone with a non-relative male. Now they are acting all "look at us how merciful we are". Chootiay.

2) Expresso
This may be really petty, but it's my list and I'll do what I want. Now most of you in Karachi are familiar with Expresso the hoity toity cafe where the hoity toity people go. Now I have no problem with this. They also ban males-unaccompanied-by-women (aka mailas) after 7 pm, because apparently single guys will enter coffee shops after dark and attack the first thing with boobs they see. Doesn't matter if you are a respectable looking guy, who comes in there regularly with your decent educated friends, if you are male-without-girl, they assume you are going to jump in and wave your penis around.

With all this apartheid-esque policy, the waiters their have begun to slowly take their heads up their own asses. They now only respond to women.

As hard as this may be to believe, sometimes I cannot find a woman to go with me to Expresso, so I go there with my all-male best friends for brunch on a Sunday. We are a clean cut non-threatening party of 4. There is a rush, so we put ourselves on the waiting list and wait. As we wait we see three parties of hip-crowd type people go on upstairs with little or now wait. We tell ourselves maybe they were higher on the list. Then this gaggle of little teenage girlies who had arrived a good ten minutes after us go through. By this time my friend Sherry gets really irked and demands to see the list. The chubby asshole behind the counter says that those girls arrived before us. Sherry is barely able to control his rage, when he snatches the list and sees that people lower on the list have been crossed off before us. At this point I very politely ask CHUBS why he let people go before us. he starts stammering some excuse about seating arrangements while the other waiters gather around him in support like the Ninja Fucking Turtles.

At this point I should have kicked chubs in the left nut, but we decided we were too hungry and left. I made a vague vow of how I was gonna call up the owner but I havent yet.

Haven't seen CHUBS there recently, I think he got transferred. But I still go to Expresso. They have good coffee.

3) Younis Khan
OK let me make clear that I love Younis Khan, but sometimes he can be a real asshole. They offered him captaincy of the Pak Cricket Team. Twice. And twice he refused, pulling some serious Julius Caesar shit. Then he was forced to take it when everyone got sick. Then he said he doesn't want it because he wants to enjoy his cricket. Now he says he wants captaincy.
You know what Younis Khan? I would love it if you took the captaincy......right up your ass. Asshole.

4) People who have an I-Phone.

..........Just because.

5) Girls who are bitchy because they think skinny is beautiful.

I found this both tragic and asshole-ish. Especially when they bring down other girls for not being skinny. Let me clear this up right now, guys do not like girls who obsess about weight. It makes us feel like we are ogres who put unfair expectations on everyone.

Look, good food is inherently sexy. So a girl who enjoys good food is inherently sexy. And a girl you can enjoy good food with is golden.

BUT. It doesn't hurt to join a gym.

6) Omar Khalid, Imran Lodhi and me.

For picking on Yasir in every interview, TV appearance, blog post , social gathering, wedding, birthday party, concert, recording session, lunch, dinner, breakfast. And for also writing a song entitled, "Yasir, why don't you suck my balls".

7) Timbaland and Timberlake
Remember when pop music used to be good? Remember when songs had guitars and you would remember them forever and ever. In the old days we had Motown, The Monkees, The Beach Boys, Cliff Richards, Dusty Springfield. Then we had Michael Jackson and Madonna. Their songs were timeless and you could pop in “The Way You Make Me Feel” right now and still groove to it.

Now we have Timbaland and his asshole partners like Justin Timberlake and Nelly Furtado. We only have ourselves to blame because we keep playing his mind-numbingly hollow hits with his soulless electronic beats and his glorification of bad grammar. If that weren’t bad enough this asshole rubs it in our face reminding us how awesome he is and how much everyone else sucks and how he’s gonna be “banging bitches in the VIP while they still be aksing (not a typo) you fo’ ID”.

Can you imagine someone with real talent like Stevie Wonder pulling this kind of shit? So Justin Timberlake, you did not bring SexyBack, that stupid hat makes you look like a poof and Timbaland is nothing more than a glorified beat-boxer who makes a couple of clicks on his laptop and plagiarizes beats and tunes from other artists. But Nelly Furtado is hot and “promiscuous”, so she’s ok in my book.

8) Mobilink

Mobilink tried to buy everything this year. From phool-wallas to tourist spots to your grandmother, everything was branded with Indigo. If that weren't bad enough, we had to deal with their serialized television ads with Shaan and Vaneeza. This is actually a separate rant that you can read here.

Anyway, they forced The Jazz Budget single into all our collective consciousness and then they had a featurette showing "The Making Of" the stupid fucking Mobilink ads. ITS A TELEVISION COMMERCIAL. Unless it is a Victorias Secret Catalogue Shoot or something with extraordinary special effects I DO NOT WANT TO SEE HOW THEY MADE IT.

9) Journalists who can't stop writing about "Khuda Key Liay"

Look I know its a good movie. And we know your company funded it. But for fucks sake its been six months. Please shut the fuck up.

And finally, the award for the BIGGEST ASSHOLES OF 2007......

10) Music Channels, Telecom Companies and Artists who let Telecom Companies buy airtime to promote their video

Have you ever turned on the TV and seen a music video for a pretty mediocre song and then you switched the channel but that same video was playing. Then you switched again and that same video was playing. And again until you wanted to ram your head through the TV screen.

Artists these days are so insecure and make such crap music that they have to force their music video upon us by having their sponsor pay for airtime so that the video runs round the clock just like an ad. Where else in the world does this happen? It is almost equivalent to an artist paying somebody to come and watch him rather than the other way round.

Since our TV channels dont really care about quality or content or FUCKING entertaining programming, they gleefully accept the money and put the video on heavy rotation. Is anybody questioning them on this? They just shrug and say "Yaar we can't say no to a sponsor". Here is a list of asshole artists with their asshole sponsored videos.

1) Jal - Sajni (Warid)

2) Ali Zafar - Dekha (Lux)

3) Ali Zafar - Aasman (Telenor)

4) Ali Zafar - Masti (Telenor)

5) Overload - Dhamaal (Mobilink)

6) Strings - don't even know the fucking name (Mobilink)

7) Shehzad Roy - that abida parveen song, (Ufone). I don't care if its a public service message. You still paid top have it played every 5 mins on every channel.

I don't care if "artists need to eat too yaar" or whether you have good songs or not. All these people are true sell-outs without any justification. I am not against an artist being sponsored by a company or videos being funded by other companies. I am against these MUSIC videos being treated like advertisements.

Why should new artists even spend money on a music video? Unless you can pay music channels to play it, they wont put it in rotation. They wont even put it in their so called made up charts.

How is this country ever going to breed good musicians if the only ones who get on TV are the ones who can afford to pay for it? What kind of fucked up model is this? And who are the idiot audiences who are indulging TV channels in their mediocrity?

Hear me now. Music Channels are NOT promoting the music industry they are KILLING IT. Anyone who becomes successful is successful IN SPITE of them, not because of them.

To recap:

Artists who buy airtime = Insecure, spineless and unethical.

Music Channels = Inadequate, low quality and pandering.

Telecom Companies = Assholes.

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If there are any assholes I have missed, please feel free to add to the list, am awaiting your comments.

Girls and Boys

In other news..... Lodhi, Yasir and me were hanging out with Rahail, the bass player for Mizraab. The conversation started with some really intellectual stuff about music and recordings and well, pretty much ended up with....girls.

Now usually I don't write too much about this topic, because well, you should always write about what you know and I don't know women. But our conversation yielded some hilarious conclusions. Please feel free to disagree with Omar's list about why men and women are both such idiots. In my humble opinion...

1) Men think like one big flatscreen TV. Its true. We can't handle more than one thing at a time. We will however be excellent at watching that one big TV. You ever go to a TV store where there are 50 different TV screens all showing something different. Thats how women think.

2) We will never understand that time of the month.

3) Top phrase you should never to say to a woman, "Calm Down". This usually makes their anger go away, but it is immediately replaced with murderous rage.

4) If we gave birth, we would find a way to compete with other dudes.

5) As much as they hate to admit it, women will always love jerks.

6) The best way to get over a crush is to imagine him/her taking a huge dump.

7) Guys are awesome because we resolve conflict through physical violence and then we get over it pretty soonn. Girls will harbor that shit for years until it resurfaces in some twisted form and bites you on the ass when you least expect it.

8) Guys need to listen. Or at least pretend to.

9) We can't stop staring. We can only learn how to be discrete. Otherwise our necks would snap.

10) Girls with ambition are sexy.

11) But we still don't like this whole feminism thing.

12) We never know if you really like us or you're just being nice. Our assumptions usually land us in a large pile of shit.

Our First Anniversary

So all you loyal fans out there (all three of you) you will be pleased to know that A.D.P celebrates its one year anniversary this month. I was reminded when I attended this year’s TCF Ilmathon mela which was a blast. It was also the site for our first gig ever. Yep. That’s right, we’ve actually made it a whole year together. Well almost.

I know there are a lot of rumours going around so let me just clear things up. Yes, we are halfway done mixing our songs. (If you were at the TCF Ilmathon, you may have even heard some of our songs as we sneaked them onto the music system :)...)

Inshallah the first song and video should hit the airwaves late March. Some of you may have already heard samples of our music, but we are trying very hard to keep the material as private a s possible till we release.

We are in talks with record companies, so I will post once we have finalized our release dates. But i can tell you that we areall extremely excited andcan't wait to get the stuff out.

We will also be performing a lot in Marhc, for those of you who haven't seen or heard us. We will definitely be doing somethign first week of March, so stay tuned for details.

To commemorate our anniversary, I am going to post a timeline of the bands history.

February 2nd 2006: Omar Akhtar and Omar Khalid (OK) along with buddy Afaan Naqvi perform at Caffeine as part of Open-Mic Night. After the show they are approached by Imran Lodhi, Khawer Amir Khan and Yasir Qureshi. Much homosexuality is suspected.

February 10th : Imran, OK and Khawer get together at Omar’s place for first ever jam. Jam starts badly when Omar blows up Lodhis amp.

February 17th: Imran and Khawer tell the rest that they have a great keyboardist who they introduce as Yasir Qureshi. However the only thing Yasir can do on the keyboard is type "balls" really fast. He discovers Omar’s darbuka and starts to play.

February 20th: Band jams properly for the first time with OK on drums, Yasir on Darbuka, Lodhi on bass/vocals, Khawer and Omar on guitars/vocals. We celebrate by parking our car outside some girls’ house and stalking her.

February 25th: While sitting at Karachi Broast, Khawer suggests some ridiculous name. Omar says, "man that’s just dumb, we might as well call ourselves something stupider, like …I dunno "Aunty Disco Project". Khawer gets THAT look on his face.

February 27th: Khawer goes on mad rampage and creates Orkut community for Aunty Disco Project. Band gets stuck with the name. Khawer forces first 50 people to join at gunpoint.

February 28th: Band gets robbed at gunpoint.

March 10th: Band performs first ever gig at TCF Ilmathon under the name "Eastern Comfort". (see pic). We get asked to sign autographs. Then the autograph seekers leave before the gig starts to go attend to Noori concert next door. We play for a crowd of 5 people, including the sound guy. Highlight of evening: A bunch of Pathans getting up on our stage and singing "Bibi Shireen".

March 23rd: Band gets invited to perform at IBA Battle of the Bands. We are declared winners after threatening the organizers with dildos.

April 20th: Khawer resigns from band after dildo-incident.

April 25th: Khawer releases solo hit single "George Bush is Gay".

May 16th: Band plays as foursome at IBA graduation party. Crowd mostly hates us until we play "Papa Kehtay Hain".

June 20th: Band headlines gig for the first time with a show at Caffeine, playing mostly original songs. Everyone agrees that the sound is bad but the enjoyed watching us jump around for a bit.

June 25th: Omar does guest vocals at a gig along with Immu and Shallum (from Fuzon), Khalid (from Aaroh) and Gumby. Band members call him names such as "Butt-Pirate".

July 15th: While Omar is on vacation, band attempts to get on TV by auditioning for show ‘MTV Battle Of The Bands". They are mocked by celebrity judges Strings. Yasir kicks Faisal Kapadia in the nuts and sings "Duur". Show never makes it to TV.

August 20th: Band decides to go to recording studio to make an album.

September to December: Still making an album

December to Present Day: Nobody believes they are making an album.

Top Ten Things I Can Do Without in 2007

10. People who ask you “Mind if I smoke?” and then look at you all weird when you say "yes".
WTF?

9. People who hear the name “Aunty Disco Project” and then ask “Which one of you is the Aunty” and then chuckle as I beat them with sticks.

8.Fat people travelling next you. I know it’s really insensitive of me, but when some fat dude is travelling on a plane in the seat next to, I feel as if I am being slowly invaded. Plus last time, this one dude was so fat, I think I lost my iPod in him.

7.People who do not laugh when I sing “Yasir! Why don’t you s*** my balls”

6. Hot people who can’t hold a conversation. E.g.
Me: So…what do you think of the political situation in Northwestern Chichawatni?
Hot Babe: Huh?
Me: Eat shit and die.

5. Goats. They are evil satanic creatures who do nothing all day except hump and shit tiny impeccably formed spheres. No wonder we massacre their asses every year.

4. People who blame everything on wedding season.
“Oh I’m sorry we couldn’t meet up, my cousin is getting married”
“Sorry, I went to a wedding and ate the prawns and now I’m shitting like a Japanese Bullet Train”
“Decided to bomb Sialkot, fuckin… wedding season…”

3. Tailors who are supposed to take my pant measurements but end up molesting me instead. I mean come on, they should at least buy me dinner first.


2. Annie. No wait, I love Annie. In fact I’m a Fan-nie. (due credit to Omar Khalid for this joke.)

And the no.1 thing I can do without this YEAR is ……(read below)

10 Things You Might Hate About Me

Things you may not know about Omar Bilal Akhtar.

1) I have a day job as general manager of a garment factory that exports outerwear. This is commonly referred to by my friends as “smuggler saala”.

2) I am an RJ on City FM89 and I host the shows Manic Monday (Monday 7-9pm) and Musicology (Fridays 3-5p.m.). This is commonly referred to by my friends as “self-promotion saala”

3) I write music reviews and post them on the City FM89 website under The 89th sense and the pseudonym “ZOSO”. These reviews also get published in Mr. Magazine, Pink Magazine and World Music Magazine.

4) Every time someone mentions “The Lion King”, I always refer to it as “The Loin King” and laugh uproariously.

5) I love singing parodies of my bandmates’ and my songs. E.g. “Gaata Mein Chaloon” became “Khaata Mein Chaloon” and “Sheher Key Aansoo” became “Sheher key G**ndoo”

6) I once wrote a song called “Yasir! Why Don’t You Suck my B***s”. Despite its catchy chorus, Yasir was not amused.

7) I once played at a concert that no one attended.

8) I hope one day to record a bhangra album.

9) My first band was called “Caesars Dog”.

10) Caesar’s Dog consisted of Omar Haq, Bilal Habib and Omar Bilal Akhtar. That’s right, the band was Omar, Bilal and Omar Bilal.