When I was younger and had hope, “The Cask of Amontillado” was my favorite story, mainly because readers are never given a clue as to the offense committed by Fortunato to warrant such hatred.

Similarly, I shall not mention the offense committed by Jonathan Kos-Read to merit the proceeding onslaught. However, I will endeavor to be as professional as possible.

Now, here is a doctored photo of him at the entrance to Birkenau, taken from a folder on my desktop entitled DIE JONATHAN DIE.

For those of you who don’t know him, Kos-Read is a professional actor and knob head. He – and I’m quoting the LA Times here – is the “token white guy” in Chinese films and TV shows, which about exhaustively sums up his contribution to cinema. I have sourced at least four independent articles that all have the words “token” in the headline.

Kos-Read does have some good points though, and in the interest of fairness, here they are:

1. I’m told that he is physically attractive.

2. He speaks Mandarin quite well.

3. There are so many photos of him online that he is a Photoshop smorgasbord.

Par exemple:

Here he is in a truck chasing Forrest Gump:

Here he is bitch-slapping the lovable Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s:

Here he is supporting the motion to sweep the leg with the Cobra Kai Dojo:

Here he is as a zombie Nazi in Call of Duty:

And here, scandal of all scandals, he is in the midst of a torrid love affair with Jar-Jar Binks:

4. Um. We don’t know that he’s committed any felonies.

Jonathan set off for China in 1997, and when he began acting, he noticed that the other foreign actors “looked funny,” had “crap Chinese” and were amateurish. “I went to acting school, I speak pretty good Chinese and I may not be a 10, but at least I’m an 8,” he told the LA Times. He spun a similar yarn in a BBC interview, but instead of “funny-looking,” he called his counterparts “short and skinny and not representative of the America I knew.” He also pronounces “niche” as “nitch,” which is extremely irritating.

I don’t know much about acting. Nothing, really, so I can’t speak on that score. However, I always imagined an 8 as Ned Beatty or a Harry Lennix. Not this:

His self-assessment may be pompous, but one can’t deny Jonathan’s popularity in China. He carried the flipping Olympic torch. But then again, we all know how easy it is to please the Chinese press, don’t we? As long as you don’t express an opinion contrary to the Party or say something stupid like, “Chinese medicine is a load of old bullshit,” then you’ll be fine.

Foreigners here in Beijing are a little more discerning, if not punishingly judgmental.

The list for JKR hate is long, but one article stands out among the rest.

Long, long ago, in a Beijing far, far away, there was an article. A Global Times article, no less, that told of the horrors of working with Jonathan Kos-Read. The article is from a Michele Scrimenti, and caused a bit of a stir. It has since been scrubbed from the GT site and from the Internet in general. For my money, there never was a better GT article published. Again, it no longer exists online, but here’s how it began:

Almost Famous

“I just saw the latest draft of the article. You’ve got a lot of work to do.” I looked at my phone and I was pissed off. This was the third time I’d sent a draft to Jonathan of the story about him, and this was the third time that he’d responded with a cryptic, cutting remark. I think the last time he said something like, “This article is a fucking disaster,” and didn’t elaborate.

It was a stupid idea to write the article in the first place. Jonathan scribbles in his spare time himself. Hell, he writes for at least an hour a day, runs a weekly writer’s group, and is working on a novel. He almost writes more than I do, and I’m supposed to be a professional journalist.

When asked about his proficient Mandarin, Kos-Read said: “Language is like a sexually transmitted disease… you get it in bed.” He went on to explain: “Bang every Chinese girl you meet… get a Chinese girlfriend, you idiot.” And his early mantra: “I’m Jonathan! I’m awesome!” And: “I’m more interesting in real life than any of the characters I play.”

It’s hard not to take cheap shots at such a smarmy tit-a-ma-boob who says such things. Which is good, because I don’t like to do hard things.

But I know nothing I say will bother him, as he revels in attention and criticism, and criticizing someone makes them yet more famous. As an actor, he likely breaks out in a terrible rash if no one pays attention to him for five minutes. Back in the day of Google Buzz, he actually wrote these things on a thread in which he’s mentioned:

@Mia and @Carlos: i’d like to include your earlier comments in the column. Mia – the one where you call me delusional and Carlos – the one where you call me a tool.

Would that be okay? And if it is do you want me to change your names?

@Funwick: i’d also like to use your comment about fame as a face eating mask. That be cool? Ditto as above on the name change if you want.

And…

Free opportunity to insult me in print.

These comments are shuttled into his column in Shanghai’s Talk Magazine called “Token White Guy: Writing About Writing About Me.” He invites criticism as if it rolls off him like water on a duck’s back, a dead duck that has been strangled for being unbearably smug. Excerpting (inconsistent punctuation usage his):

So now, two weeks after it got published I have:

A movie option on the rights to my life

Another interview on National Public Radio

Talks about a reality TV show about my life

Ditto on a documentary about me.

Ditto on a TV series based on my life

My knuckles cracked reading that. He said “ditto.” Ditto. In case you missed it, in that article he mentions people who snubbed him at school having since come begging for some Kos-Ass on Facebook. Girls. He actually boasted about that. The insecurity and despair is naked.

Almost enough to make you want to stop making fun of him… almost. Not even almost, really. More of just an urge to have a smoke break.

In another piece, “How To Be A Jew,” he writes:

Why are Jews better? Why did people hate them in the past? Why are they so rich? Why are they everywhere?

These questions were on my mind last month because I just got cast in a show where I play one. It’s this big 40-episode monstrosity about 50 years of Shanghai history. I play a Jew who goes there to make his fortune but instead finds love. It’s a rich, complex, genuinely good role that begs for a serious actor.

And I am a serious actor. I care about my art. But what does that really mean? This month: How a serious actor practises his craft.

His career as a blogger in Talk ended abruptly afterward.

This all wouldn’t be so unbelievably infuriating if it weren’t for the universal fact that there is a finite amount of happiness and attention in the world, and this douchepocalypse gets more than his fair share.

Just ruminate bitterly on that for a bit. This guy…

…probably has more stuff than you.

Some may accuse me of jealousy, but truly, for all the money in the world, I would not sink to such depraved boobery.

Ironically, his Chinese name is Cao Cao, the name of the militaristic and antagonistic tyrant during the Three Kingdoms period. Just think on this: what kind of muppet names himself after a villainous warlord? It would be like calling yourself Slobodan or Bert Mugabe. The real Cao Cao, the military genius who hoped to see a united China, wrote:

Jonathan Kos-Read did this:

The connection between the two is not abundantly clear to me. But I digress.

Jonathan is also an amateur photographer. You can see his casting call for models at ModelMayhem.com, where he states, “I never shoot for money. Acting is an artistic job. I betray it for a paycheck. So I keep this part of my artistic life pure. I know not everybody has that luxury so if you need money, I pay. If you’re a model and want to shoot, just email me.”

My research into Jonathan Kos-Read has led me down dreadful depths. I’ve even looked at his damned Amazon review page. I know that he didn’t like the book Chariot: The Rise and Fall of the World’s First War Machine, to which he said, “Just a list of facts – no discussion of the theory of chariot warfare.” He’s even featured on the Tumblr Beardlover. HUH? What the hammer, what the chain?

There is so much more to cover — I didn’t even touch upon his body of work. But alas, I am covered in douche juice and must retreat. So, what do we know about Jonathan Kos-Read with absolute certainty?

1. He likes chariots.
2. He’s a dildo.

“The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge,” says Poe’s narrator, who lures Fortunato to the catacombs. If I could only do the same, metaphorically speaking, to JKR, and without wasting that good wine. So much the better, probably, to just ignore him.

TAR Nation writes the BJC column To Serve People, which you can find here every Monday.

Judging from the last few we’ve been to, the Beijinger knows how to throw a good party ­– it’s just a damn shame about the guests. Photo gallery at the bottom.

By Beijing Cream

Holding the party in the open air of Sanlitun Soho and suggesting “beachwear” as a dress code was clearly pivotal: the signal for Beijing’s really quite impressively large douchebag population to give full vent to their oeuvre of tics and mores. “Dress code? Dude… I was wearing this Hawaiian shirt with oversized aviators, four days’ beard growth and a jaunty pork-pie hat when I woke up!”

We arrive just after four. Upon entering the “gate,” there was a kind, red reminder for all foreigners that there is a crackdown going on for the next 100 years, that undercover police would be among the crowd and that the magazine would not be held responsible for any problems that ensued. Always the best way to get the party started.

As for that crowd: I have not seen so many ferocious wankers in one area since my school days. It was like gathering 200 Drake Moreaus in the same place, at the same time. I honestly would not have been surprised if the alleged Beijing “expat rapist” himself had suddenly shown up at the end as some kind of celebrity foreign guest, strutting on stage to cries of “Dude!” and “Hey, rape me!” to sing Shaggy’s “It Wasn’t Me.” Obviously, it helped – or didn’t, at all – that it was all taking place in broad daylight, on a sunny day, with about a hundred Chinese shoppers and security guards staring joylessly down onto the proceedings from above, so you could see the twattery in full Technicolor.

To make matters worse, someone had invested in about 6,000 beach balls, which kept being tossed and bounced around – so you’re standing there with your paper cup of ale when a cargo of orange-and-blue inflatable plastic comes and knocks off your pork-pie hat. Dude!

What’s more, there were some who considered this vibrant annoyance as the single greatest invention since the football phone, leading to a bunch of tattooed Eurotrash crawling on the ground, searching for more plastic balls, which, judging from the reactions of those hit with them, might have been filled with pure hate.

From above, due to the conflagration of Hawaiian shirts (many of which were the same ones given for free with the entry fee of 100 RMB), it looked like some great hipster deity had sneezed Sanlitun SOHO into being. This situation was made far worse by the presence of at least 1 in 18 thinking it would be hilarious to roll up their shirts and show their bellies in the summer heat, like they were proper Beijing migrant workers. This spell is quickly broken by the sight of these same expats trying to bounce a beach ball off the ladies walking around cleaning up all their trash.

But as I said at the start, the BJer does know how to party – perhaps unfairly, I imagine their CBD office to be a hive of inactivity, with work mainly geared toward drinking games and finding witty reasons to go home early – and seem to have their hands in the pockets of the right sponsors. Screw BMW… let’s have Chimay and T.G.I. Friday bankroll this fucker (the TGIF workers were particularly enthusiastic, given that they had been reduced to going around offering shit “chicken wings” to guests while wearing goofy caps and other heavy, black TGIF-branded garb and manfully grinning: for my mind, these underpaid folks practically made the party and should have been given an award of their own, for best example of grace under pressure).

There was a smorgasboard of booze – including Stella and Hoegaarden, administered by a patient staff surrounded by drunk, baying shit-munchers – as well as some vile Babycham-wannabe drink containing regurgitated cava chunks, served in a blue can, that tasted like a sommelier’s piss sample and was being enthusiastically swigged by various tits wearing plastic straws in the shape of goggles, the de rigeur method via which this swill is presumably imbibed, even at home. Chunks In Blue Can: “As drunk by douches” – I think that would work, actually. If you’re sipping wine from a can, you have to have some kind of mental disability already.

The free food was much less of an event, alas. Put simply, the best consolation any of the half-dozen restaurants that presented themselves could have taken was: “Fuck it, most of them were probably too shit-faced to remember anyway.” Not us. As mentioned, TGIF was serving piss-poor chicken wings, but that is their niche role in the catering trade; that’s no surprise and it won’t stop the great Beijing proletariat from pouring into their booths and ordering the hot wings by the bucket. New SOHO Indian restaurant Khajuraho won’t have done itself any favors, though, by proffering thimblefuls of basmati (despite their booth prominently displaying a whole morass of different rices) soaked in a sorry sub-continental excuse of a sauce, thus elbowing aside Ganges to chalk up a new level of average-ness for Indian in the capital.

Another big problem with the whole shebang was that Jonathan Kos-Read was there. And no one, not a single soul, punched him in the face or stabbed him in the heart or hurled santorum in his face or circumcised him or drank from his skull. What a letdown.

This Jonathan Kos-Read fan page on Facebook, sadly, has one member

While all this was not going on, there was some kind of awards ceremony going on in the background. Yeah, I’d forgotten about that part as well. Indeed, there was something both proud and pathetic about the on-stage antics, an endless parade of shortlists and prize-giving played out to a deafening chorus of we-don’t-give-a-flying-fuck from the crowd. They should just cut the booze off during this part in the future and instead rig the microphone to four giant Marshall speakers, all dialed up to 11, while the MC screams, “The award for best after-hours drinking goes to The Den, that’s right, THE DEN, DID YOU GET THAT, YOU FUCKING FREELOADERS?”

After a single minute of their meaningless prattle, the urge to scream back at the presenters to shut up and get on with it was extraordinary. But then, suddenly, you remember that this will lead to more mind-numbing exhibitions, dance-offs and bad hip-hop; thus, quelling your rage.

The awards. We should talk about them, right? Apparently, the Best Place to Bring a Date is Migas or (snigger) Bed Bar – so there’re two places to avoid like the fucking plague, right there. Best “cheap drinks” went to First Floor (huh? Not Smugglers?). Blue Frog, meanwhile, pulled a ton of awards (Best Daytime Drinking, Best Staff, Best Bar Food, Best Advertising in the Beijinger) all for Christ alone knows what reason. [Editor’s note: *rubs thumb and forefingers together meaningfully.] Beijing fuck-tunnel Vic’s won for the coyly phrased “Best Place to Find a Date” category but not, curiously, Best Place to Turn up With a Flamethrower and a Nailed Baseball Bat Having Had One Hell of a Bad China Day. They would really have won that one – look out for it at next year’s BJC Bar and Club Awards. There were also a bunch of other petty categories that made me want to throw up slightly in my mouth – Most Beautiful People? Fine, but how about Most Fugly People? We want to know where the city’s most desperate and loathsome denizens hang out (other than Vic’s). The Den – yeah, that works.

Anyway, if you need to see the rest, check here. There are 36 categories – yes, you heard that right, thirty-fucking-six – and I honestly cannot bring myself to cycle through any more. It was all so wearily familiar, like the excruciating local (shit, I meant expat) “rap acts” and other entertainments that might as well have been performing at home, in front of a mirror, wearing a tutu, for all the attention being paid to them. The only thing missing this year was edgy/sexy local nightlife blogger, something Boyce, who was apparently sulking this one out.

This part of the party – also known as “the whole point of the entire event” – was once again presented by local blonde Elyse Ribbons, for no other reason I suspect than because there’s an old marketing document in the Beijinger’s hard drive labeled “BJ Awards How-To-Do” dating back from 1998 and No. 4 on the list clearly says: “Hire Elyse Ribbons to present. If unavailable, hire anyone who speaks Chinese and isn’t fugly.” Fortunately, Elyse has, is and always will be available to get up on stage and irritate a crowd just by virtue of speaking Chinese and not being fugly. In fact, I guarantee that if, next year, they were to get someone else – Dashan, say, or Yang Rui – Elyse Ribbons would still wander on midway through like Ophelia and announce that The Rickshaw had won an award for Best Hot Wings.

So, in conclusion: same shit, different year. See you all next time!

Click to enlarge



Thanks to Lola for the Jonathan Kos-Read photoshop. See if you can find the head we used among these pictures.