Michael Bolton....The Master

There's a weird thing going on here with people in Jakarta and their fixation on shitty love songs. You walk the malls or coffee shops or restaurants and it's the most sugary, crappy stuff that you can find pumping through the speakers. They love it; they can't get enough of it. It's a source of endless amusement to me. If you think a Beyonce song is shit, wait till you get a load of a local singer going a cover of it and it being placed on a loop in some department or grocery store. Talk about OOF.

Anyway, long story short I was in a taxi the other night and the driver had the radio on. It's usually a choice of Indonesian music, religious channels or the aforementioned syrupy romantic stuff. I really wasn't paying too much attention to any of it because he had it turned down low ("I just want to put on something I can ignore" is one of my favorite movie lines of all time) but I was quickly jolted out of my own thoughts by the unmistakable whatever-you-want-to-call-it of Michael Bolton singing "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You". I found myself strangely annoyed and amused at the same time. It was the first American song I had heard outside of my mp3 player or Starbucks so I was kind of happy about it but at the same time it was Michael Bolton. What to do!

Turns out there wasn't anything to do because three plus minutes in the song ended. As is always the case with radio djs she started talking as the song was fading. It was in Indonesian throughout her talk but I clearly heard the words "Michael Bolton" and in what can only be described as awe her description of him as "The Master". I'm pretty positive that cab ride made my night and maybe my whole week.