As We Look For New Hobbies

Salsa - 'Why Not?' thought Shaun

The Girlfriend has been rather animated recently about us sharing hobbies and doing more things together. This is easier said than done, as some of my favourite hobbies include getting drunk at grubby bars, watching bikini clad tourists swim in the pool across the street, and just generally being cynical and miserable about most things.

Understandably, she seemed a tad reluctant to take up these activities with me, and so Salsa dancing was mentioned as a compromise hobby instead.

Now, for those of you who are not familiar with Salsa, it’s probably the biggest and most famous Cuban import we have in South Africa today - well, besides all those clichéd Che Guevara tshirts you see everywhere - but those are made in China anyway.

The Salsa is a very sexy dance, where the women wear revealing outfits, and the men wear disturbingly tight pants. Mix this up with some hypnotic salsa music, which basically sounds like something the Latino singer Ricky Martin might belt out; together with the always lingering presence of booze at the bar, and you have the makings of a seriously sexy Wednesday evening on your hands.

As this would be the only opportunity for me to rub myself up against other women without the risk of The Girlfriend punching me in the throat, I immediately jumped at the invitation, and decided to check it out.

The Girlfriend, who had been doing this for months already, ditched me for her Advanced dancer friends pretty much as soon as we arrived, leaving me to fend for myself and try and make friends in the Beginners Class. The Beginners Class was an eclectic blend of people from all walks of life – shy geeky men, women with facial hair, a couple of attractive model wannabes and, for some obscure reason, a large amount of Scandinavian students.

The class itself is a relatively relaxed affair. Through disciplined repetition, you are made to do the same steps over and over again, until you have successfully molded your second left foot into a fully functional right one. On this particular night, I was taught how to do a two step primarily using my toes and swiveling my hips, whilst at the same time maintaining an air of heterosexuality. The men also learnt how to successfully spin a woman around without twisting her arm or sending her sprawling into an adjacent wall, something I have always wanted to master after several unfortunate incidents in the past. With each new repetition, the women will move one place to their left, meaning that in theory, everyone gets an opportunity to dance with one another. Somehow, this didn’t seem to work in my case, as I kept ending up with a muscular Swedish woman who, despite her rather butch nature, seemed more determined to rub my crotch with her upper thigh, than actually learning any moves.

Somehow, I managed to evade her attempts at indecent assault, and successfully managed to make it all the way to the social part of the evening. Here, normally shy men get the chance to dance with women who would typically be way out of their league. Interestingly enough, the unwritten code in the world of Salsa seems to be that you never decline an invitation to dance.

Trying it out for myself, I gingerly approached a tall brunette who looked as if she could crack walnuts with her chiseled calf muscles, which resembled elongated slabs of solid concrete. It was whilst dancing with the slightly scary Nut Cracker, that I learnt another Salsa lesson – you don’t talk during Salsa. “So do you come here often?” I began, only to be cut short by a look of pure venom, usually given to me by The Girlfriend whenever I forget to courtesy flush.

I looked around the dance floor and yes, although everyone seemed happy and wore reasonably genuine smiles, no one spoke whilst dancing.

So it seems then that Salsa, not unlike many relationships I know, can only truly be enjoyed if the men keep their mouths shut.

Oakes signing off.

As Shaun Takes A Moment To Gloat

A Smoker: About to get screwed by the Man again.

With Pravin Gordhan’s budget speech last week, heavy smokers can now look forward to paying more than R1000 per month for the pleasure of putting tar in their lungs. I can of course sit back and be rather smug about this - with it having absolutely no bearing on me - as I have not had a cigarette in more than 5 months now.

This may surprise many of you, my mom included, but I have often flirted with the likes of Rothmans, Peter Stuyvesant and Marlboro over the years.

Going through about four packs a week - usually two during the work week, with another two during obligatory Friday and Saturday night binge drinking sessions – I may not have been classified as a heavy smoker per se. Looking back, I don’t think I ever woke up wanting to have a smoke - cravings usually occurred whilst vanquishing another stiff Jameson, or trying to look cool in front of impressionable young 18 year old girls who found guys who smoked “edgy”.

There were of course also times when I felt nervous and needed nicotine to calm me down, often when I needed the courage to speak to someone prettier than me, or when I needed to persuade bosses that it would be in their best interests not to fire me, and that they should in fact pay me more instead.

The shock tactics employed by anti-smoking organizations never really phased me. Sure, you hear all the bad press smoking has, the fact that it causes lung cancer, emphysema, can make you sterile and even cause impotency. As a young stud finding his way in the world however, these were not the types of issues which would keep me up at night.

Talk of impotency is best left to old people with saggy balls or the Brazilian footballer Pele, not a twenty year old man who can just about pee straight. As such, these concerns would often all be filed in the “Let’s worry about this in another few years” folder, which also contained plans to eventually be tax registered, and to set up a high yielding pension fund.

As a rule, I tended to buy the “Smoking Can Harm Your Pregnancy” boxes anyway, as it served to re-assure me, fairly confident that I was highly unlikely to fall pregnant, and thus could smoke without causing any danger to my unborn child.

No, It was the noticeable signs of ageing that eventually lead me to throw my cigarettes away.

I was pretty comfortable with the smell - for many reasons, I found it rather comforting that I permanently smelled as if I were at a braai, and the smoker’s breathe could easily be countered with the disciplined use of sugar-free chewing gum. It was the yellowed teeth, wrinkled face and slightly grey complexion I developed which eventually swayed me though.

Which is why I believe these anti-smoking adverts should seriously change their tact. Showing pictures of black lungs are not going to get people to stop buying cigarettes. Showing a photograph of me after a heavy night of boozing and smoking just might though.

Oakes signing off.

It Really Isn’t

Cricket: A fearsome game.

So this past Sunday I had what The Girlfriend often refers to as a “Shaun Moment”, which basically involves me doing something entirely irrational and more than a little silly. Examples of previous Shaun Moments would include the year I gave The Girlfriend a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, the month I decided to invest half my salary in lottery tickets, and the fateful night I decided to consume a large tumbler of what I now know was not cream soda but rather something called “absinthe”.

On this occasion however, I decided to forfeit my usual Sunday ritual of lying on the couch, breaking wind intermittently whilst eating roast chicken and reading the Sunday Times, and instead spend the day chasing a hard piece of leather around a field, in what was meant to be a gentle game of social cricket.

Now, I haven’t played much cricket since high school, back in the days when I often had differing opinions to my cricket coach, leading to endless debates about my role in the team. ( I thought I should open the batting for the team, he thought I shouldn’t be in the team)

Nevertheless, the lack of match practice didn’t really bother me, as I felt confident in my natural fitness, my arguable cricketing talent, and the fact that I would be up against a bunch of internet geeks who were more likely to humiliate me playing cricket online than on an actual field.

So it was with this false sense of bravado that I walked up to the wicket to bat, having not picked up a cricket bat in several months, and then it was only to try and gently tap the vagrant who I found sleeping under my car.

I’ve always thought of cricket as a bit of a soft sport. Sure, there are times when you may have to face 150km/h balls from a maniacal Pakistani fast bowler, but at this social level of the game, it’s more likely to be a dibbly dobbler computer programmer who can just about turn his arm over.

Five minutes of batting however, and I was beginning to question that school of thought, what with my big toe having been severely abused not once, not twice, but three times by a deadly accurate and fiercely aggressive dibbly dobbler. Added to that, my hip and arm resembled something that had been chewed on by a rabid dog, as I had earlier made the suicidal decision to dive into the batting crease, not realizing that with the bone hard pitch, this would be the equivalent of throwing myself into broken glass. If this were not enough, my knees then decided to pack in, no doubt out of pure shock, having not been forced to exert itself in this manner in close to seven years.

The end result saw me scratching around and scoring a fairly respectable 31 runs, having faced approximately 672 balls.(I’ve always believed in a steady and measured approach to batting). I even had a bit of a bowl and took a wicket with my first ball, before reverting to type and bowling, what coaches and fans alike would describe rather aptly as “a pile of shite”.

Unfortunately my hands let me down though, and I ended up dropping a catch off the batsman who would go on to win the game for the other team, leading to various jeers, curses and insulting remarks by both teammates and the crowd.

In addition to losing the game then, the damage inflicted on Shaun Oakes was particular heavy. With a big toe as large as my head, bits of sinew and bone hanging off my arm, and walking in a manner which suggests an eventful night in a Pollsmoor Prison cell, I am currently resembling a man who has been a victim of a vicious assault.

Which is why I will probably stick to rugby or bare-knuckle boxing in future. Cricket is just a tad too rough for my liking.

Oakes signing off.

As Shaun Enters Another World

Cape Town Municipality. Or Hell.

Being a raging masochist, I felt like punishing myself last week and so - rather than closing a door on my hand, or having The Girlfriend kick me in the groin repeatedly - I decided to go one step further and pay a visit to the Cape Town Municipal offices instead.

Getting inside the offices is a process in itself, finding legal parking outside the building takes an extraordinary amount of luck and good fortune. Basically, there seems to be more chance of you winning the lottery than actually finding a parking bay which is available to the public, as everything seems to be demarcated and catered for what is referred to as “disk holders”. Who these disk holders are, or where you can get hold of one of these magical passes is anyone’s guess, but I’ll go on the assumption that the vast amount of parking bays are set aside for staff. It will go down as one of life’s great mysteries then, alongside the Loch Ness monster and the existence of aliens, where the municipality expects the public to park.

After several fruitless minutes searching for parking, I eventually stopped crying, composed myself sufficiently, and then reverted to the age old custom of bribery, offering the security guard at the boom gate untold riches as well as the soul of my unborn child if he allowed me to park in one of the demarcated bays.

Once inside the building, I then proceeded to do the customary inter-department dance, which involves going to a department where three clerks are available with no queues in sight, before being twirled around and spun in the direction of another department, where two clerks are available for a queue of approximately twenty thousand.

Now besides dealing with the clerks, who all seemed to have recently woken up from year-long comas, there are also the members of the public one has to contend with.

For some bizarre reason, people seem to think they can unload their life stories to one another when queuing in government buildings. Who came up with this rule? When did I agree to it? Apparently I did though, because I am now privy to the fact that Ethel, a grey-haired woman from Walmer Estate, is eagerly awaiting the return of her son Clive, who is living the dream and serving people warm beer in a seedy pub in Bradford, England. I can also tell you that she hates black people because she found it necessary to mention this to me. Repeatedly.

With the racist Ethel to my left, I was sandwiched nicely with a seemingly retarded woman on my right, who seemed to be seated there for no apparent reason, and who laughed hysterically whenever I asked her to shift up as we got closer to the clerks. To rub further salt in the wounds, I was also lucky enough to have an old man sitting directly behind me at one point, who sounded as if he had water on the lung, and who insisted on coughing on the back of my neck.

Eventually I made it to the front of the queue – although technically I was actually second, the retarded woman in front of me seemed to be treating this as a day out, and seemed more concerned with eating the contents inside her nose then being served.

From here I dealt with one of the recently revived clerks, who spoke to me in slow, dull tones, and who seemed absolutely terrified whenever he looked at his computer screen.

After what felt like a lifetime, I eventually staggered out of the building. To my surprise the whole experience had only taken two hours, it was still Thursday and, as far as I knew the year was still 2010. The municipality is a bit like Narnia in that respect, as time seems to stand still once you enter the grey netherworld.

Nevertheless, if you ever want to punish an enemy or nemesis, get them to file a query at the municipality. There can surely be no fate worse than that.

Oakes signing off.

How Do You Get Access To The Extra Tickets?

So after last week’s confession that I had dropped the ball, and had seemingly missed out on getting tickets to the 2010 World Cup, there seemed to be a glimmer of hope with the news that hundreds of thousands of tickets would be released to South Africans, thanks to the greediness of the hospitality industry.

However, logging in to Fifa’s official website and trying to purchase these tickets is proving to be a difficult task, as nothing seems to have changed since last week. Is anyone else battling here? I think this calls for a poll.

Click here if you cannot see the poll.

Oakes signing off.

Now That We Have Actually Seen It

Avatar - As Really Seen By Shaun

So, after months of trying to watch this movie in 3D, wanting to get decent seats in the process, we eventually managed to see Avatar.

Due to all the media hype around this movie, I was understandably concerned that it had been built up heavily, to the point where I would leave the cinema disappointed. Counting in its favour however, was the fact that I had not watched a 3D movie before, and so would be pretty open to the spectacle.

So, did it live up the hype?

That would be a yes, capitan.

The special effects, as you would come to expect, is simply mind blowing. Make no mistake, this is pure escapist fun. In many instances, you lose yourself and it feels as if you are literally in Pandora. James Cameron reportedly spent 10 years developing the technology used to film Avatar, and first impressions are that he didn’t spend the time jacking off, to porn but that it was rather time - and significant money no doubt - well spent. So from a visual point of view, hands down, this is epic and a real spectacle.

The plot is where a lot of critics have taken shots at the film, but to be fair, I didn’t think it was too bad. Sure, it’s fairly cliche and it doesn’t take rocket science to work out where the film is going. At the end of the day though, you are not going in there expecting to see a whodunnit or a psychological thriller filled with twists and turns. It’s a sci-fi film, with a fairly standard plot, you’ve seen it in Star Wars, Star Trek etc, and you know what you are going to get.

You will of course have noticed that I haven’t mentioned the actual storyline, which is a deliberate ploy on my part as by now, everyone should know what the film is about.

I am usually pretty cynical when it comes to overly hyped films, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one. The Girlfriend seemed to enjoy it as well, and even let me feel her up thereafter, which is usually a sign that she is content and satisfied.

Do yourself a favour and go and see Avatar. Two months since being released in South Africa, it’s still playing to full theatres so you may well battle to get decent seats, but this is one of those films you simply have to go and see. In 3D.

Avatar scores a Steve-O rating of 4.

Oakes signing off.

What Do You Think?

Shaun Oakes Logo

Friday evening, and I thought I’d take the opportunity to touch on both myself, as it’s been a long week, but also the fact that I recently comissioned a new logo, or “corporate identity” as they say in marketing language.

Based on some of the feedback so far, I would say consensus is pretty polarised, some of you have hated it,whilst others have not really hated it.

Give me a shout and let me know what you think.

We will chat again tomorrow.

Oakes signing off.

Does It?

I look forward to shaving, in much the same way that I look forward to having my fingers broken, or getting stabbed in the leg by a gangster in Adderley Street.

Ever so often then, I enjoy sending the razor off on vacation, usually at the very back of the bathroom cabinet, and will instead spend a couple of days cultivating some manly face fur. I like to think it makes me look ruggedly handsome, like a young Benicio Del Toro, or perhaps a slightly prettier version of Russel Crowe. The Girlfriend on the other hand, likes to think it makes look like a giant wally with pubic hairs growing off my face.

Because of this, growing a beard has developed into a bi-monthly battle of wills – I will steadfastly refuse to shave, she will steadfastly refuse to sleep with me. Eventually, I am almost always the one to blink first, leading to my welcome re-admittance to the communal bed, but it does lead me to wonder just how popular beards and moustaches still are today.

Since the days of Magnum PI, starring Tom Selleck and that magnificent moustache, there haven’t been too many hairy sex symbols for women to swoon over. This is either because men find facial hair difficult to grow, or because women have developed a disliking for rough bristles rubbing against their inner thighs. Either way, it appears that men with moustaches and beards are now in the minority.

A recent study at a local medical institute found that 87% of women preferred clean shaven men to the hairier variety. This resonates with me as, out of the approximately 20 women who I interact with on a regular basis, three of them enjoy the company of hairy men.

So what do the rest of the women think?

Hair or no hair? Let’s hear your thoughts.

Oakes signing off.