Hadouken!

Where this comes from: I interviewed someone recently who’s gonna be in the next Street Fighter film … I was (am) bored at work so I decided to do some Googling!

My Street Fighter tactic – as taught to me by my very capable and violent male cousins – was to just press buttons randomly and furiously. Sort of like in Rock Band, when those long coloured bars pop up. It always worked.

I knew that Hadouken! sounded familiar, for some reason.

It’s strange, but while I’ve been thinking about the fact that hey-o I’m 24 this year, I haven’t really given any attention to the fact that the Big Day is this Friday. Everyone else is like ‘Hey it’s your birthday!’ (even my boss?! which is weird I guess cos I’m still new to this nice boss thing) and I’m like yeah ok.

(What I really want to say is ‘Yeah ok but I haven’t gotten rave reviews for my first novel (Zadie Smith) or won Wimbledon (Maria Sharapova)’or any of that really cool stuff – let’s really not talk about Relationships – so I’m really just a failed twentysomething’ but that’s boring right and I don’t want to be a party pooper)

But since people seem to be genuinely (I think so anyway lah) determined to remind me of what should be joy on thehappy occasion that is growing a year older without really having achieved anything as tangible as a fiancee, a hot bod, or a bank balance that will allow me to hop around the world taking in all the summer music festivals ………………. I bring to you a fantastical orgy of what my ideal birthday would be like.

I wake up on Friday morning to discover that my parents have shed all their nasty you-useless-child-who-is-not-a-neurosurgeon attitude and have decided to indulge in their youngest daughter’s desire for a Playstation and … Rock Band! Despite all past evidence to the contrary, I discover I actually do possess a natural rhythm thanks to the African blood that flows in me from my mother’s Indonesian side. Also, I can hit the drums AND sing along to Maps at the same time, making me cooler than Karen O.

My sister records my awesome performance on her phone and posts it on her blog. Her German boyfriend’s cool Berlin friends (I actually don’t know whether he has any cool Berlin friends but we need to move the story forward ok!) discover how totally talented (and cute) I am, and forward the video to other people and it eventually lands on a music blog. Someone calls me “cooler than Karen O” and an indie record company exec sits up in his seat when he reads this and says “we’ve got to fly this girl to New York!”

I’m kind of running out of ideas for this fantasy, so let’s just summarise the rest: I go to New York, I am awesome, I play shows, and I have babies with one of the dudes from Vampire Weekend. Also, somewhere in there, I get to see Fleet Foxes in concert, and I also land a role in a musical or film singing new60s songs a la Amy Winehouse, Duffy and Adele.

Oh yeah, and I grow about another foot taller.

Happy birthday me!!!

(cupcake porn from Flickr)