10. The Oscars Best Picture Award Blunder
Who could have thought that the “Jade Kwan Incident*” could have happened at the much acclaimed Academy Awards! During the presentation for the Best Picture Award at the Oscars this year (2017) on the 26th February, due to a staff member handing the wrong letter containing the Best Actress Award to Warren Beatty, he mistakenly announced that the award went to La La Land. In the end, it was the producer for La La land who embarrassingly corrected the error in announcing that the actual winner was really Moonlight!
In the aftermath, the accountant firm which was responsible for handing out the letters containing the results admitted their responsibility for it and the accountant who make the blunder had received death threats. The most interesting moment was that Beatty had already felt something was wrong as he was about to announce the winner and so decline to read aloud the result, handing the responsibility to his co-host Faye Dunaway instead!
9. Mr. Law’s “Fresh and Sweet”
During the 4th November episode of Passion Times’ show “Otaku of Cultural Studies”, one of its show host “Mr. Law” demonstrated the bare minimum for hosting a food travelogue in his one hour presentation of Japanese cuisine, where during the whole time Law could only describe the food as “fresh and sweet” or “I don’t know how to describe [the taste]”. He even described fried food as fresh and sweet. Consequently, “fresh and sweet” became the catchword for Passion Times, where it had become synonymous with “vocabulary-deprived”, “dumb fuck” and “don’t waste money on a flight to a food trip to Japan if you don’t know jack.”
8. Star Wars Episode 8: What a Load of Crap
Success due to 8 but failure also due to 8; except the former is BB8 and the latter is Star Wars Episode 8!
How much I detest this instalment of Star Wars I had discussed in detail during the 422nd episode of National Stage at Passion Times, but to be able turn a sci-fi action epic into a load of crap is not something easy to do. If we look at it as a parody then it would be excellent indeed.
Putting Star Wars Episode 8 as the eighth on this list is purely for healing my inner grief, reminding myself that I have to treat this movie franchise akin to one of Raymond Wong Pak Ming’s low-class comedy films in the future.
7. “Fuck for Luck” guru has 250 thousand disciples
A sorcerer had been accused of being part of a “fuck for luck” scam, but due to having a lot of female followers and 250 followers on Instagram, as well as happy photos of the sorcerer and a group of female models in his Instagram, the incident instantly attracted much discussion online. “Fuck for luck” guru had suddenly become the most popular upcoming industry, with everyone wanting to be part of it.
The president of the Teddyboy Fans Club was very tempted and itching to try his fortune, but fortunately “Cow Man” (author of the Hong Kong comic Teddyboy) managed to turn him away from the idea, after spending one entire episode on Passion Times’ Teddyboy Fans Club.
6. The Sale of Next Magazine never within sight
On the 17th of July, 2017, Next Magazine announced that it has been sold to Kenny Wee, even published a farewell edition titled “The Next Era Has Ended” on the 27th of September in the same year, but it seems that the “Next Era” could never actually end as the final settlement date kept being postponed, even at the end of 2017 the sale has yet to be finalised. No one even knows if the sale could be successfully settled!
At the same time however, the ATV that refused to be buried and forgotten announced its revival, while the supposedly dead Jiang Zemin attended the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.**
Since then, Next Magazine, ATV and Jiang Zemin had been in a tripartite confrontation situation, where no one knows which one will die first until the fat lady sings.
5. Taipan Cheng arguing with a brat
A regular at Humour and the King, Albert “Taipan” Cheng, made it on the Top Ten Incidents again!
It was said that Joshua Wong, Nathan Law and co. from Demisistos upon release from prison had been lambasted by Albert Cheng and a bunch of show hosts from D100, all because they didn’t accept an interview at the first moment by D100 after their release on the 24th October, 2017. Instead, they would rather be in a live interview by Hong Kong Commercial Radio programme, On a Clear Day, than a phone interview by D100!
“Taipan” Cheng was utterly furious, pointing out that despite Joshua Wong and his buddies from Demosistos being show hosts at D100 themselves, and not very good ones at that, they had the nerve to refuse show up at D100 at the first opportunity. Clearly, according to Cheng, they do not support developing online media, nor do they support their fellow buddies.
Cheng, true to his nature, would bitch about one of his “buddies” from time to time; and despite lacking in new ideas, he must be awarded for consistency. Considering “Taipan” Cheng has been a regular subject on our show, this scored him some sentimental points and thus he has made it on the Top 10.
4. Hong Kong Indigenous: a gang of political charlatans in exile
Hong Kong Indigenous (HKI) once rallied people under their call for a “Revolution of the Ages”. Yet after having pitched their tent and had their high, Ray Wong flown the coop, their former “Plan B” Alan Li Tung Sing had gone missing and Edward Leung withdrew from HKI, after having been “off the sonar” for a long time and resurfaced after the Hong Kong localist guru Chin Wan fished him out with a watermelon***. As for their allies in Youngspiration, their leader Baggio Leung rallied for a protest but fled from the scene on a taxi after it failed (hence his nickname “Taxi Leung”); he then acted like “Screaming Marmot” (See # in translator’s note) at the Legislative Council, and lately he said he would support Tommy Cheung run for the Legislative Council by-election but has yet to show support in person.
This group has been consistent in the following manner: big in their talk but not in their walk, going off the radar and confusing traditionalism as localism! After these buggers have been messing with Hong Kong localism in the last two years, what was localism has been turned into traditionalism!
Perhaps some people may say that Hong Kongers tend to like people who would often go off the sonar, but unfortunately even in this regard they sucked, because during the category 10 typhoon earlier this year our very own show host at Passion Times, Wor Jai, had his very own “submarine” before he even graduated from university. So even in terms of submariners Wor Jai had beaten them first (see ## in translator’s note).
3. Master Chef Nicholas Tse
Hong Kong singer Nicholas Tse transformed to a “master chef” in his food travelogue show, Chef Nic, where he had made a number of laughable blunders while being a try-hard: the banana slipped from his hand while trying to flipping it one-handed, sharpening his knife over his Beef Wellington and wearing safety glasses when stir-frying; and we thought it was just an one-time gimmick for everyone to have a laugh! Instead he kept going, producing a cooking competition show and a Chef Nic cooking team! Recently he even demonstrated how to incorporate planchette writing into making desert, and then there was the incident where he forced a vegetarian chef to cook meat ….
Nicholas Tse herein demonstrated that persistence sometimes is not a virtue, even if we treat it as a comedy we would still suffer from entertainment fatigue!
It is said that “being a total dick becomes a style”, but even this idea Nicholas Tse had managed to subvert, he is simply molecular gastronomy in himself.
2. Helena Wong’s #MeToo incident of sexual harassment
Hong Kong legislator Helena Wong tried to join in the latest #MeToo craze, whereby she went to interrupt fellow legislator Elizabeth Quat’s Facebook livecast at the Council, and when another legislator Paul Tse came up to stop her, Wong suddenly shouted “Sexual Harassment! Sexual Harassment!”
Just the linkage between the word “sexual harassment” and the name of Helena Wong is enough to place this incident in second place on the Top Ten.
1. Darling Ng charged with defamation
Passion Time’s Darling Ng is being taken to court, with My Radio filing a defamation lawsuit against her for a Facebook status that had received only a few shares. So how come this incident made it to first place on this year’s Top Ten Humour and the King Incidents? Is it because the once much admired Wong Yukman went to file a lawsuit against a netizens? Is it because My Radio announced that Darling Ng is their competitor? Is it because a Facebook status that hardly anyone shared could be accused of affecting another online radio platform’s performance? None of the above!
The real reason for making it to first place is this: Darling having done multiple dangerous experiments, even had the daring to livecast her cooking and wherein she cooked up the seemingly inedible “Darling’s Magic Rubber” that many fellow Passion Times show hosts had tried to eat and even played with ….. yet despite having these startling creations this year, she had never been charged with “manslaughter” or “possession of dangerous goods”. Instead, she was unexpectedly charged with defamation instead is something beyond comprehension ….
* The Jade Kwan Incident happened during the 2008 Top Ten Jade Solid Gold Best Ten Music Awards Presentation held on the 3rd of January, 2009, in Hong Kong. During the presentation of the Performance Award (not to be confused with the Outstanding Performance Award) which went to Susanna Kwan, Hong Kong singer Jade Kwan mistaken thought she had won the award instead and went on stage to take the trophy from Susanna Kwan, only when the show host explained did Jade realised her embarrassing mistake.
** Hong Kong television station, Asia Television (ATV), erroneously reported on its news programme on the 6th July, 2011, that the former Chinese president Jiang Zemin had died. The blunder had made ATV bear the brunt of ridicule and the butt end of jokes in Hong Kong ever since.
*** An ancient Sino tradition where people hope to rescue souls of victims of drowning so they can reincarnate.
# “Screaming Marmot” was an online video meme of an actual screeching marmot dubbed with a man’s screaming voice. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkGTB8ESMCM
## This is an in-joke, as Wor Jai’s parents had their car inside the very underground car park that was reported on the news for having been fully submerged under seawater that had flood in from the shore, to which other show hosts joking remarked that Wor Jai suddenly had his own submarine.