Where is the lav?

Singapore – The red carpet ain’t so glamorous when you’re barricaded on one side of the fence, squeezed between pushy photographers with sweaty pits who haven’t got an inkling of who they’re shooting, all the while trying to make ironic jokes about the whole tedious process of star-identification. Meanwhile, across the border perches an entirely different species of person – those rabid, shrilly fans. They tend to be in their early teens, possess an unhealthy amount of loud and unnerving vociferations, and will rally on for just about anyone who toes the red line. Fame whores, I think they call themselves.

KC Montero is the first "famous" person to appear at the MTV Asia Awards arrival show. The girlie fans go nuts, but as long as he doesn’t look their way, they angrily scream his name with increasing vehemence. I did not know he was murderously popular in Singapore. "Kaaaayceeee!" I would imagine that the SWAT team used a similar strangulated-rabbit sound to drive the Koresh cult out of their mansion. KC appeases them with a funny little jig. The clueless photogs, misapprehending the Singaporeans’ fruity pasticcio accents, scramble to adjust their lenses, and I get shoved under a stepladder. "Stacie? Is that Stacie Orrico?" Another guy walks up, this time blond. "Derrrrrek!!" Wails and gnashing of teeth. And so I thought it was Gareth Gates, and so on and so forth. The "controversial" t.A.T.u (or should I say "t.A." since only one girl who loves another came) mowed down the carpet without stopping for photos, shielded by overzealous handlers. She was looking rather pale.

These photos are an evidential account of my behind-the-red-carpet travails (note to self: next time, don’t wear heels) as well as the hours spent in the photo room jostling for shots of barely-grinning-it celebs. The show itself was such a mish mash of incomprehensible Asian acts interspersed with ludicrous video vignettes of life in a cupid fat farm. Cohesion was irrelevant, although it went off pretty much without a hitch. I suppose if it weren’t for such musical luminaries like hosts Michelle Branch and Vanness to assuage the audience with their somewhat pan-Asian appeal, the show would be little more than a low-rent Eurovision song contest. But this is not the fault of MTV or awards shows in general, but the inevitable characteristic of being a multilingual region and trying to gather everyone under one banner – even if the banner be Love.

Oh, people would argue that music is universal and all that, and so I can very well enjoy Taiwanese hip hop act Machi (who taught us how to say "show me your ass" in Mandarin) while not getting Thailand’s winner "Bird" Thongchai McIntyre who sounds like a sexed-up Gary V, or Malaysia’s winner Siti Nurhaliza who sings the "contemporary" old-school ballads. Perhaps what’s more universal than love or music is star appeal. And a sense of style. Strangely, no one wore red.

We weren’t allowed to ask questions in the photo room but I soon found out photographers can be just as demanding and tenacious as journalists, if not more. "Mariah! LOOK OVER HERE!" demands compete simultaneously with "Mariah to your right!" "UPSTAIRS!" "Downstairs!" "Do something funny!" and the poor artist would be a confused head-twisting mess (Not Mariah though, her bodyguards posed her for a numbing second than whisked her away). A Simple Plan, those overgrown children, whisked in and attempted to tear the place apart. One guy tried to steal the water cooler while another dropped Singaporean fried rice all over the carpet. Can anyone spell ADD? Their classroom antics were really for the benefit of their personal videographer, who captures just how wacky and fun the band really is, for future use in music videos and posthu-mous revival DVDs.

Unfortunately, by the time the last band, the Black Eyed Peas, came in to be photo-graphed, my digital camera went into a lithium-deprived coma, as it tends to do at the most opportune moments. But I managed to catch one of the guys at the after party – or at least I thought I did. There was a big black guy with massive dreads rocking out to the wicked beats of the Wicked Aura Batucada. I tapped his elbow, mumbled through the noise, "Hey Black Eyed Pea," because I forgot their names, "can I have a picture with you?" The man agreed and looked confusedly into the back of my cell phone, but I was ultimately corrected by a bemused record exec. Ah well, for all the dude knew, I was an Asian pop sensation.