3 Arrests, A Police Lineup, and a 2-Day Trial (Part 5)

PART 5 - PRE-TRIAL 

In case you are new to this blog, here is part 1.

THE LEAD-UP 

Shiiiiit. I was too busy becoming first name basis with otters and drinking enough hi balls in Japan to quench the thirst of a thousand horny, old and married guys that poke girls on Facebook that I forgot I left y'all hanging about my story of getting arrested and tried. I only realized when I got a text that Squarespace charged me $1738hkd (Yaaaa baby) to my credit card through autopay for my annual subscription and I was like hold up when tf did I sign up for autopay but be glad that I did cuz if not y'all would have been left hanging forever and would have to hear the rest of the story in a tldr form from a drunk me somewhere in LKF. Honestly the story isn't that exciting I just make it colourful with my fuckery. Plus I'm currently on a plane somewhere over the ocean and need to distract myself from the fact that I have befriended some pilots and they're absolute wastemans and there is bare turbulence while I write this. **EDIT: I started writing this post on the plane back from Japan, now it is almost 2 months later and my life took a 180; I ended things with who I thought would be my future wife and my music career just took a huge hit after my set got shut down at ALSOFEST and honestly it feels like I’m taking Ls left, right, and centre but at least I have this outlet? Lol sorry tmi. Ok here is how pre-trial went for me. 

I was "summoned" to court (LOL SUMMONED wingardium leviosa) at like 9 in the morning which to me is like a death sentence already and thanks to my trusty tattooed and lovely lawyer Kwanye, I sorta knew what to expect. This stage was called the plea, where you're read your charges and you either plead innocent or plead guilty and you go from there. At this point, Kwanye is simply being a brother to me by giving me all of this free advice because I already told him I can't afford him anymore and that I'll be going for the duty lawyer route, which I wrongly presumed was the equivalent of the free toy that comes with a happy meal. Seriously though, regular lawyers charge you an arm, a leg, and a silver pubic hair for having to share the same ecosystem as you so he really was doing me a huge favour. Like they will literally bill you minutes of a phone call and can you imagine if you got bad reception? All my Filipino goons know that I’m on that KABAYAN $88HKD a month unlimited data plan and we don’t get the best signal sometimes. That man will speak at my wedding for sure. Here's a haiku that I just thought of written with love: 

When I get married

Whether to her or the skreets

Kwanye East will speak

Arigatou gozaimasu.

I remember getting up that morning, NOT hungover for once because I'm an adult now and eating what would later become my routine pre-court meal, which was half of a duck fried rice from Yardbird. Nah really though if any of y’all get arrested, try it out as a pre-jail or pre-court meal, it’s light but heavy enough to last you most of the day, not too much oil and no triggers for people with weak stomachs and the duck confit is spectacular mixed with the herbal shiso and ume flavour. Absolutely decadent. Shoutout to Matt, word on the street is that he was thinking of giving me a raise for plugging Yardbird so much, like I ain't imposing or nothing it's just the word on the street. I knew that I was gonna have to plea but I was still pretty nervous as to what to expect so I didn't take NO chances - I got dressed in a suit and even shined my shoes. I mean my hand tattoos made me look yakuza as fuck but at least I looked like I was the somewhat respectable accountant for them and not the guy who convinces you to go to a bar in Kabukicho (the Wan Chai of Tokyo) then when the bill comes it's $150USD for a bowl of Calbee potato chips and $200USD for a whiskey soda and $80USD for….. the ice in your fucking whiskey soda. I’m not even joking you can Google it, it’s called 氷代 and the shakedown gangsters are infamous for it. Nah forreal though, I felt like I had to dress like I gave a fuck because trust me I gave a fuckload of fucks. I wasn't about to leave that shit on my criminal record for some shit I didn't do not to mention over the lowest form of human to exist. I taxi straight to Eastern Magistrates’ Court in Sai Wan Ho looking dangerously majestic like a lion holding a shotgun and highkey feelin’ myself and I get there so early the fucking court is still closed LOL. I literally had like an hour to kill so, in my suit looking out of place as fuck, I walk to a nearby park that had some waterwork type of thing going on where the aunties are doing tai chi and the uncles are curling and twirling their long hairs coming out of a facial pimple and the weather is beautiful and I just sat for an hour. It was one of those rare moments in life where I was like damn.. Freedom is such a blessing. 

After I was finished emoting and looking more out of place than 21 Savage at a Klan rally, I walked back to court not knowing what to expect, and then BOOM here I go bumping into a friend I haven’t seen in almost a decade who’s there visiting his parole officer probably with a cup of clean piss he got from someone else (cuz I KNOW this mf get high LOL) and I can’t help but laugh at how fucking small this city is because bro it’s like 8:45AM on the Eastside why tf are you here and it’s funny because I’m sure he’s thinking the same thing. I go up to the duty lawyer’s office and I’m told to wait - clearly I’m overdressed because I’m up there looking like one of the actual fucking lawyers and not a criminal because everybody else waiting in line with me just looks like… ‘yeah he definitely did that shit’ LOL. How tf you gonna show up to court with a Gucci sidebag bro of course you in here for possession hahahah you might as well jump into your jumpsuit and get used to the fact that the closest vagina gonna be over a barbed wire fence now my g. Should have moved more silent like the “g” in lasagna huh?

Finally I get called into a room and I meet my first duty lawyer - his job is to just give me legal advice and tell the judge what I’m pleading, which is obviously, NOT FUCKING guilty. Let me just say this about this lawyer - he should definitely explore other options in life and maybe see if he can paint or crochet some sweaters or some shit because lawyering is not for him. I’ll describe him - kinda tall middle aged Chinese dude, heavy American accent, glasses, grey hair with a matching grey suit and a grey tie on some weird camouflage shit, and the personality of someone who… became a lawyer just so he can chat with criminals and act like he’s ‘down with the hood.’ Nah forreal, he’s saying things like “aight?” and “but you sayin’ you ain’t do it tho right” like sir I did not get dressed in my suit to talk to a mid-life crisis. 

Now here’s why I say he should stop lawyering - because one of the first things Rice Cube tells me to do is to take a bindover plea. So what this means is, you literally admit to the crime and then ask them for a lesser charge and since it’s my first offence, he's saying I’ll probably just get probation or something for a year. I find out later from other lawyers that this is one of the DUMBEST things I could have done because A, I would be admitting to the fact that I banged this guy’s forehead against the gate like 4 times and fucked his face up which I did NOT do, and B, I wasn’t getting charged for a small-time common assault, my shit was one level up closer to an aggravated assault charge because it involved head contact so there would be NO way I’d get away with just probation for a year. Why the fuck do I even want probation when the camera CLEARLY already showed that I physically could not have done it. This is a lose-lose-lose situation like on a night out, when you gotta take one for the team and not only does your boy not hit but he now in the hospital because the shady Viagra he bought on cheapviagra.com not mixing too well with his arthritis meds and honestly, fuck him but y’all went to the same kindergarten so now you gotta wait with him at the hospital til he discharged. Man fuck this guy Gucci Mein, I have literally gotten better legal advice from my youngins who can’t stop getting arrested and know the system like they know how to do crime LOL. I feel like this guy definitely has 8Mile on BluRay. Anyway I strongly disagree and kept turning down Lil’ Bao Wow and his “Aight man I’m just sayin’ you ain’t got much to lose with dis bindover hea” bullshit and agree to just adjourn the verdict - this means I can not plea anything this time and then talk things over, give myself more time to prepare, source a better representative than LL Wok Hey which I think is the best idea. Now I’m sent down to the courtroom to wait. 

Bro the courtroom is so fucking cold, I wrote so many rap lines in my head about it. “My heart colder than courtrooms, long memory short fuse, Prayin’ I don’t ever gotta call mama like “I’ll be home soon”” etc etc etc. TELL ME THAT AIN’T FIRE. Nah forreal though, being in a courtroom is real interesting shit because it’s quite noisy - there’s quite a lot of people and it’s open to the public for the ones who wanna laugh at other people’s crimes and there’s just so much going on, with papers rustling, mfs crying, low-level gangsters walking in without bowing to the judge so they get dirty looks from the oldass rent-a-cop who looks like dust finna fly off him if he coughed, it’s like the most fucked up classroom. A few people caught my eye immediately - there was the chubby guy with the Gucci sidebag who, of course, got caught with possession LOL, a huge black guy in a suit who needed an interpreter who I later find out was tryna hit on a girl through text but got hit with a restraining order instead like damn bro city boys down 1000, a Thai guy who kept on rolling up his sleeves like he was gonna fight the judge who FSHO did everything he was being accused of, and a few others. So mostly everybody here is in the plea stage but there were two cases that definitely stood out.

The first was a white guy who was definitely an alcoholic who apparently got so drunk in Wan Chai that he smashed multiple store windows and a taxi door and this mf bail was set at $5000 and mine was only $500 so I was like GODDAMN how many fucking windows did he break!? I felt like I needed to up my game a lil bit because this dude was dropping Lebron James numbers on my headtop, like hm how do I feel about extortion and its ethics. The second case was this auntie who was actually already in jail I assume and her case I couldn’t understand too much of cuz it was in deep Canto. So, on the side, there’s a section that’s fenced off where I guess the people who are already in jail/custody get escorted in by police and are read their charges and she walks in, chained tf up and the whole courtroom was like, “…damn”, like when a princess appears at the top of the castle stairs except the princess was a crackhead auntie and the top of the castle stairs was a miniature cell inside a fucking Eastside courtroom. Anyway she’s being read her charges and it must have been something serious because everybody finally stfu to listen and everyone around was saying ‘..wah’ quietly. Auntie clearly doesn’t like what’s being said about her crimes by the prosecution and so she starts talking over everybody - something you’re obviously NOT supposed to do. Talking over the prosecutors, the judge, yelling to the crowd tryna win us over on some weird gladiator shit and now police are yelling and are tryna subdue her while she screams and struggles and guess what? The judge takes this opportunity to just PEACE the fuck out!!!! Like he didn’t even bang his gavel, he looked both ways real hard like a 4 year old crossing the road for the first time in front of his parents, just saw the commotion and DIPPED for like 20 minutes with the most expressionless face and even the lawyers were confused like wait hold up huh..? And what’s hilarious is, when everybody came back, I think everybody in the room knew ….. that he really had to go take a shit LOL. And I can hear the Cantonese chatter and yes, it was unanimous, everybody thought he went to take a shit and dipped as soon as the Auntie presented him with an opportunity hahahaha. I wonder where he put his wig while he took a shit though, like did he hang it from the hook or on top of the toilet paper dispenser? I guess he gonna have to plead the shits on that one.

Anyway my turn finally came and it was uneventful as fuck, I stand up and go to the mic and my lawyer says to postpone my shit another month and the judge asks me if I’m ok with this and I say yes and that’s it. It was like, my shortest set ever. I get my courtroom summoning papers back and I am sent back upstairs to the duty lawyer’s office. Now I’m made to talk to this young guy in a suit who works in the office, Mr. Chan. He, like everybody else I have met in this system, starts off talking to me wary like I’m some criminal but reads my case and is like …. why the fuck are you even here over this. Mr. Chan says he’s glad I didn’t take the bindover deal from Vanilla Rice and tells me the next time I come here I will have to plead not guilty. And he encouraged me to fight it because he knows I can beat it. See? That’s the fucking attitude that I need, take notes MF POON. Idk I could have totally written this whole thing without mentioning Mr. Chan because he doesn’t do anything hugely significant but he was a genuinely nice man who wanted the best for me and was super happy when I beat the case that he actually called to congratulate me so I just wanted to mention him. He directs me to who I will call Auntie Elaine, who is a feisty older Cantonese lady with glasses and short hair who was essentially responsible for me getting a free lawyer from the government because I was actually riiiiiight on the line of being illegible for “making too much money” but that’s bullshit because I go into CitySuper to window shop and enjoy free aircon.

My next few visits to the courtroom were very uneventful and mostly administrative - I plead not guilty in the courtroom and my trial date was set, Mr. Chan collects a statement from Manny which was funny because I mean… just imagine me and Manny in any situation that’s supposed to be serious, and I manage to get a free duty lawyer thanks to Auntie Elaine carefully going through all my financials. It was funny because they go through EVERYTHING money wise - luckily my health was taking a bit of a turn because of all the stress at the time so I could plead that my hospital bills are just gonna add up even more (they actually did too) - and when she asked about the money I get from Spotify streams it was extremely hard to tell her that I get money from music about ‘fuck the system’ and essentially, fuck you too Auntie Elaine, so I just played it off like I played guitar or some shit like that. Really though, she was like an angry mother to me the whole time which was so comforting with her ‘hai why did all my sons end up being the dumbest criminals I still love you tho here’s some cantaloupe I cut for you’ vibe. Even when I told her I beat the case she just looked at me over the top of her glasses like “Mkeh. Good,” but I could tell she was quite happy. Damn, writing this, I think I’m gonna go back and get them some Japanese snacks or something I lowkey miss them. Sorry that was already long but finally I am about to meet my official lawyer. 

MEETING MY LAWYER

I’m not gonna lie to you, when Mr. Chan gave me the piece of paper that said “R**** Hunter” followed by his phone number, I did not have high expectations. I won’t lie and I will admit to you that I had my prejudices - a white lawyer in Hong Kong for a case as small as mine - surely he could barely give two fucks. Plus my computer teacher in high school had the same last name and he was a cunty Australian guy that had the biggest white superiority complex and was mean as fuck to us until we caught his bitchass taking upskirt photos of girls in Carnegies one time then he switched up like Asian moms in front of company and tried to be nice. So I don’t know if my brain automatically made that weird connection like they was some distant cousins or some shit but I went into the office expecting to be talked down to and dismissed but thankfully it was the total opposite. 

So what you wanna do is heat your deep pan or hot plate up to like medium heat and then get some decent beef - honestly that beef shoulder with some good marbling from Kai Bo that goes for like $60HKD a brick is pretty good for this too and then cook it halfway til I would say about 60% then set that shit aside. What this does is release the good oils from the meat into the pan and now you wanna toss in your vegetables. Sukiyaki literally means, “what you like, cooked”, so toss in whatever fucking vegetables you like cuz we ain’t communists but the go-tos would be onion, shungiku, cabbage, leeks, and carrots with some sides like tofu, shiitake mushrooms (I don’t fw these at all tho) etc. Some people gonna tell you to add the ingredients AFTER you already put in your sukiyaki tare but nah fuck that, you want some of that char on your vegetables for extra umami, the only thing you should add after is udon, konnyaku and whatever veg and meat you got left over. But the first round you need to get that char for that fucking UMAMI is what I’m saying. What, do you put milk first and then your cereal you weirdo? Let me guess, your favourite ice cream flavour is vanilla right? Yo it actually embarrasses me to watch actual Japanese people do Youtube tutorials on sukiyaki catered to foreigners and they add the sauce right after the meat or they don’t even take it out of the pan so they overcooking the shit out of it like bro come to the Southside let me fucking teach you how it’s done. Anyway every household got a different sukiyaki tare recipe but here’s the Tomiyamas - soy sauce, a fuckload of sugar, and sake to adjust. The sake finna burn off like cardio once it hit the pan and turn to skraight umami and it balances the sweet and salty from the sugar and soy and create a harmonious marriage of flavour. I don’t really measure shit cuz time is money and I ain’t got both but I’d say mix about 100ml of soy sauce to a fuckload of sugar and like siu siu sake til it’s a flavour you like. Oh yeah I forgot to tell you that this blend (called warishita in Japanese) should be made before you start everything. Once your vegetables and tofu got some nice char to it, pour that bitch in (maybe not all of it depending on how much veg you got) and let the sake evaporate for a bit then toss that 60% meat back in. Crack a whole raw egg, chop up some spring onion and add some Japanese ramen oil into your bowl and dip everything in this mixture. This mix helps cool everything down fast, even tofu fresh out the pot. Don’t give me that shit about how you don’t eat raw egg, you shouldn’t have been raw in that pussy either and now look your second baby mama keyed your Playstation cuz your broke ass don’t got a car. Once you’re getting full, toss in a pack of udon into your hot pot as the shime or the closer and double up on your egg-spring onion-ramen oil mixture for some of the most flavourful noodles of your life. Best during family gatherings especially in the wintertime.

I probably have ADHD. But sukiyaki is my favourite food ever in life and I promise, the Tomiyama way is probably top 4 in the world. So I was met with a middle-aged chubby man in a sharp 3-piece suit and thick round glasses who spoke with an extremely strong Scottish accent. He is pleasantly surprised that his client speaks perfect English for once as he told me he doesn’t speak any Canto and I shudder to imagine what he has to go through when Ah Gwai from Sham Shui Po somehow has to explain to him that the drugs weren’t his, they belonged to his friend Ying Gor from Tsuen Wan but they exchanged Gucci sidebags on a night out for OOTD pics in LKF and then accidentally got caught with his friend’s drugs when Magnum got raided but he really doesn’t wanna snitch cuz they failed their DSEs together and bonded, like can you imagine? We’re sat in his comfortable lil office where he’s drinking, of course, tea, and again, like everybody in the system, he starts off slightly wary of me and sizing me up like “hmm I wonder what this suited up big Jap guy with hand tattoos is about, he kinda looks dickish” but we start watching the videotapes of the night of incident at Ozu and of course, he realises that I really could not have been the one to assault that fucking bald fuck.

We’re rewatching the tapes and adding his little Scottish commentary like “Oh ya, I see him pointing in your fehs (face), that’s rud (rude)”, “Oh ya, I see his mizzus (missus) holding him back from being ungry (angry)”, “Oh ya I see him gesticulating, this is all good materiiial for the judge” like damn Mr. Hunter how you casually slide ‘gesticulating’ in your sentence and I had to interject and tell him that is officially my new favourite word. Like I may have mentioned before though, the footage is mostly cut off by the conveniently placed fan and I never leave the frame long enough to be able to grab Tin Man from Wizard of Oz’s head and bang it against the gate. By the end of the videotapes me and him are like best friends now which is kinda weird bonding over footage of a crime scene but it is what it is and he comes up with a plan to try and get the case tossed fully by asking for the same bindover plea - BUT to edit out the statement and remove the part that says that I was the one who took this guy by the head and banged it against the gate. So I would be admitting to the fact that I pushed the guy out of Ozu out of self-defence but nothing was done afterwards because, as the video shows, Manny was too busy keeping us separated and it is as CLEAR AS DAY that I am physically not capable of doing what they’re accusing me of. He explained that if I admit to the edited statement and if the bindover works, I’d probably just get a warning or a light common assault charge that will go away within a year of no further criminal activity and I’m quite okay with that and I thought he was a sicko when he actually threw the word “gesticulating” into his report to the judge and talked bare shit about the main instigator of this incident - fucking C3PO. This man SAT score must have been off the charts. We both have very high hopes for this plan and it would avoid trial where he says “anything could happen.” Btw if you don’t get any of the references to the guy who put me thru all this, send me a DM I’ll send you his picture and it will all make sense LOL.

Well I guess the judge is legally blind, POP holdin’ it dowwwn because the bindover plea is rejected and I’m set for trial. Turns out, the prosecution, aka the drunk fucker who caused all that trouble at Ozu, has to approve of the bindover and just let that shit go, but he said no. So yeah when I first found out I don’t think I spoke for like 2 days just out of disbelief and anxiety. But you know what? If this motherfucker wants war, we gonna give it to him.