FAUX EVENT COORDINATOR

You know the ones I’m talking about, those wannabe designers who’s only claim to fame is that they covered a poor event hall with 50,000 meters of fabric of varying colour that caused Stevie Wonder to simultaneously see, trip and go blind again in 2 seconds.

These fauxs are the wonder of all fauxs everywhere because regardless of the mess they make of your event (see above on crap decoration) the bad food they managed to coordinate which sends your stomach to the toilet and the inconsistent timing (the event started at 4pm but you are only allowed into the hall at 8pm) they are still being hired!

The faux event coordinator is the bad penny of all fauxs they keep turning up!

They have no concept of colour coordination, and think that draping fabric over any standing object (you don’t move, you become a center piece) makes them creative.

The only thing they are good at coordinating is your bowels to the toilet because the crap food they source for, which incidentally has not taste, nutritional value or better yet correlation to an animal or plant living or dead has so messed up your system you have to lie down on the cold tile of the toilet praying for death or better yet the death of the faux event coordinator.

The faux event coordinator has the emaciated walk of a dead chicken and the talent of same the difference of cause is that at least the chicken can boast of once being a chicken hence additional value.

Spotting the faux event coordinator

• Look for any idiot directing people to ‘drape that fabric over that person’!
• The idiot who keeps you standing outside for 4 hours because ‘we are just finishing the hall’.
• The nincompoop who thinks that because someone had the bad luck to hire them, they are allowed to be rude to guests
• The faux coordinator has some similarity to the faux stylist, both have no fashion sense, so look for the twit in all events, with a clipboard, a stupid smile and very bad clothing sense.
• If you see all the staff at the party’s gaze shooting laser beams in one direction, there you will find the event coordinator
• The pompous git who forgot to order the flowers, the music and the electrics and has the gall to tell you the person paying them, ‘I didn’t think it was in my contract’. Ummmmmmmm babes, read it again because unless I am mistaken the money I gave you covers all the above!

Avoiding the faux event coordinator

• Well for one thing never tell a prancing twit that you are having any event, because whether you want to or not you end up with a faux event coordinator
• Don’t make the mistake of being sarcastic to the event coordinator of the latest disaster you attend, they don’t understand it, so by being sarcastic, you might as well hand over you business card and wallet because you next event is the next disaster.
• Sometimes it is not so much the faux coordinator you avoid, but the food, so if the place looks like a paint bomb went off, I would advise you, don’t eat the food, if you do, on your head or bowels be it.

FAUX STYLISTS

I know I’m not the only person who has seen a bedraggled, ‘fashionista’, swaning along the streets of Lagos looking like something the cat dragged in and didn’t eat, if you as I have had gone on to speak to these fascinating breed, you would be aware of the wonder that is the faux stylist.
The faux stylist believes in fashion over style or class, they believe that why not mix horizontal and vertical stripes, dots and sharp edges, and God forbid that they recognize that different occasions call for different outfits, because that would just be too much information.
Faux stylist inflict their horrendous fashion sense on unsuspecting clients (who to be honest should know how to dress themselves these days) and crow about how ‘in the know’ they are. These fashion victim advisors mostly come in the female of the species, but more and more the men have started to follow this line with similarly awful results.

Spotting the Faux stylist

• Whenever you see somebody who looks as though they have had an accident with a paint truck, a truck of nails and random pieces of fabric you have found a faux stylist.
• Affected, over the top, overly fashion conscious and totally vapid when it comes to issue of style and class again you find a faux stylist
• Any random fashion show where the best they can dig up for couture is bits of twig sewn on Ankara, total faux stylist home
• When a stylist cannot tell you about the new wave in fashion that happened post WW2
• When the only names the stylist knows are, Prada, Gucci, Versace, Calvin Klein, Louis Vuitton, and Tommy Hilfiger.
• When a stylist only knows Chanel for perfume and handbags, but does not know who Coco Chanel is
• When the stylist cannot give you a fashion timeline starting from mutton sleeves and Edwardian/ Regency styles, to 80’s revival with a touch of the New Romantics (I choose not to go earlier cus some people’s minds might explode with TMI).
• When a man wears a bow tie on a tee shirt, I hate to say it, not being a stylist and all that, but, anybody who does that is not cutting edge, they are idiots who obviously do not have a mirror
• When someone walks up to you and has the gall to tell a pear shaped woman to wear leggings with a tight top
• When the so called stylist cannot tell the difference between a pear shape, and apple shape.
• When every colour the stylist talks to you about is ‘electric’ something.

Avoiding the Faux Stylist

It doesn’t take a genius to know a horrendous fashion mistake when they see it, similarly you can literally spot a faux stylist from at list 20km always. Having said that spotting them is one thing, actually avoiding them is another. The faux stylist is the most rabid of the faux entrepreneur, from fox-trotting into any possible fashion, style, media or just plain any party, the faux stylist is a determined breed.

To avoid them:
• Never ever mention even in passing chance that you have no idea what to wear. If you do their x-ray hearing is on the move they will find you
• Do not look to hard at someone wearing a ridiculous ensemble, don’t get me wrong the laws of nature are on your side, but the laws of bad fashion is on theirs and any random look will make them think you are admiring their awful outfit.
• Don’t mention you are in the public eye, this is pretty self explanatory, if you do say so at your peril, I can guarantee that you will turn up at your next event looking like a mixture of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Ghost of Christmas past all put together.

FAUX ENTREPRENEURS

Before I begin, I should say that I know what it means to be an entrepreneur, it is a lot of hard work and dedication, and besides, I am one as well, who can afford not to be in this economy. What galls me however are those fakers who use entrepreneurship as a bludgeon to oppress people what in truth they are jobless wonders.

The faux entrepreneurs are one of those people who can be mistaken for normal working business owners, after all they talk a good game and kinda look like respectable, but you will be wrong!

These jobless, shiftless so and so’s are the snake in the grass just ready to spring at you with the classic line, ‘you know in my business, it’s all about the people’. Which is by the way the lamest line a person could give considering the fact that this jobless wankers are in bed till 12 noon, cannot say in 3 sentences what his business is about and to add insult to injury still thinks that having a business card is the same as having a registered business.

Spotting the Faux Entrepreneur

The truth of the matter is that anybody who owns a business is potentially a faux entrepreneur, don’t get me wrong, many people who have business but these interesting species use being business owner as an excuse not to find a job and leave their parents house.

I mean any random person who claims to own a business but cannot show you the follow up to this claim is a faux entrepreneur . They sit around, waiting for a business to come to them so they can reject it because they are ‘thinking’ about the next BIG thing!

Be warned because this shiftless wonders are everywhere, and here are a few things that might point them out to you.

• Someone claims they own a business but cannot tell you what it is about
• A business owner who is always in bed till 12noon, this is not a reason for despair, but in Nigeria unless your job somehow involves that bed you are not a business owner you are either jobless or a prossie.
• After 2 years of running your business you cannot speak of one thing you have achieved or potentials you have met with
• The person always carries a self help book and quotes ‘people who have made it’. I don’t know about you but most of the gazillionaire entrepreneurs I know, while admitting to have gotten inspiration from other sources have not made those sources their bibles.
• They are the first person in any discussion to pipe up with how we can make money from this idea. Don’t get me wrong money is important in a business but everybody knows that you have to make the investments to get the return. Nobody ever made any money lying on their back, except Jenna Jamison and even she had to get up once in a while.
• The one person who is always fighting in all events to get a freebie

Avoiding the Faux Entrepreneur

For once I cannot give you a glib answer on this, because the amount of faux entrepreneurs are overwhelming, they are like ants or flies, they clump around shit and make life miserable for those who want to actually get something don’t with their lives. However a few tips on avoid these group.

• Work – a faux entrepreneur does not work, so even if you give them a job on a silver platter, they will avoid it, because of ‘prior commitments’. Work is like kryptonite to them!

• The truth – Now the difficulty with the truth is that it can be harsh. I have been told that I am too harsh when I tell people the truth, but faux entrepreneurs have wax in their ears. No matter how subtly you try to tell them they don’t get it, so good old fashioned tough love is called for.
OI SHIFTLESS WONDER! GET A JOB OR REGISTER YOUR COMPANY AND DO SOME WORK.
Its harsh but one of two things happen, they actually get off their arses and get a job or otherwise they leave you alone, so either way you win!

FAUX COMEDIANS

Before I begin this edition of faux, I feel I have to give a little history lesson.
Now the genesis of comedians, come from Jesters in medieval courts, they were meant to entertain the King to keep him from randomly chopping people’s heads off. Of course if the Jester or Fool as they were also known did not do the job well, their heads were chopped off.

Oh the good old days, when we could just chop off the head of wannabe funny people.

The faux comedian is that random fool who has gotten hold of a microphone and won’t let go, they are the idiots who repeat the jokes that you’ve heard on tv, radio and on stage told by better more talented people who can make you laugh because they not only know how to deliver a line they can also sell the joke.

These wannabe’s are the jobless, no account fools who if they had good sense they would have stayed in their banking job, and probably be earning viable cash and boring people like they should, but no oh! They have to be a comedian!

Spotting the faux comedian

It is nay impossible to spot the faux comedian because most of the times they are wearing suits like normal people, they sometimes even speak like normal people, but here are a few things I have noticed that might help in your bid not to be hemmed up in a corner by some dude who thinks he is the funniest thing since Richard Pryor set himself on fire!

• If the suit is just a tad too shiny, they are a faux comedian. Real comedians realized that the shiny suit went out in 1998 when they were suddenly being picked off by snipers who had just had enough.

• They are the ones who do the sad clown faces so you go up to them and ask are you alright, at this point I have to warn you, you did yourself o!, because this is the impetus for them to fall into ‘a funny thing happened to me on my way here’. It was not funny when it happened, it will never be funny and in all truth it is not funny in retell.

• If you meet a guy/ girl and you happen to like him and s/he tells you he house shares a three bedroom house (not bad we all do at times) with 7 other people!

• If you meet anybody who takes sunglasses frames and makes them into clear glasses frames!

• When you give some joker you number and s/he chooses to share it with their hundred million roommates (at this point I cannot but advise you to teach the idiot some manners, in the way of ‘you MF you thought you were funny let me introduce you to my friends BITCH AND SLAP)

• They are the first person on the mic so they can show you what they did when they were auditioning for the millions of avenue people use to make money off none funny gullible fools.

Avoiding the faux comedian

• Don’t ask anybody how they feel if they have on a shiny suit (for one thing if they look sad it’s because the suit is causing them sweat, kinda like a pig wrapped in foil in a microwave)

• If they say they live with more than 2 roommates in a 3 bedroom flat give them a wide berth

• I’m sorry this is the only advise I have for you, because if you are caught by a faux comedian, there is nothing anybody can do for you. So I suggest if caught be brutal and stop the foolishness in its track.

• I am sorry to say that if by any chance you reject they come back and you explain to them nicely of course that you are getting an injunction that means they cannot come 20 yards near you, will be included in their act, be sure they will want to use you as an example of their none existent wit! Don’t smile, and as I said above introduce them to your little friends BITCH and SLAP! Cus that is the only language they understand!

FAUX ACTORS

You don’t have to see a faux actor to know them, the simple reason for this is that you will hear them, because the first words that tends to come out of their mouths, and God knows it’s a big one (mouth that is) is ‘do you know who I am’.

Ummmmmm no I do not know who you are, and if you have to ask that question I am guessing you don’t know who you are either.

The faux actors is that idiot at the top of every line, at the center of any gathering and hanging on to a real actors coat tail asking the ridiculous question above. Their claim to fame is that they were once an insignificant extra in a film or television show with a real actor, but worse than that even as an extra all you saw was their elbow as they tried to shove the other actors out of the way to get more screen time.

Spotting the faux actor

Other than the above there are a few key ways to spot the faux actor

• They are the ones who are wearing fake designer shades….. indoors.
• They start all conversations with, ‘when I was in a film with’
• They tell you their CV before they introduce themselves and it goes something like, ‘Oh so you know (name of real celeb) well I saw you talking to them and I had to come across because you know I worked with them in (insert name of little known and less cared about major flop movie)
• They tell you that they studied mass communication at university and tell you things like…. ‘I love the aesthetic of film’, and when you ask them which era of movie making most inspires them, they are stuck in a farce with their mouths wide open.
• Their movie hero’s are Fifty Cents in Get Rich or Die Trying, Beyonce in Obsessed or better yet Fighting Temptations.
• When you ask them if they know who Sidney Poitier, Wanda Sykes or even Boris Kodjoe or Zoe Saldana are they are stuck between a rock and their phoniness.
• While they know Genevieve Nnaji and Jim Iyke, they don’t know Matt Dadzie or Ego Boyo.
• They always tell you if you look at them for more than one second ‘you must have recognized me from……’.

Avoiding the faux actor

The faux actors are not as plentiful as their other faux compatriots, however they are still plentiful enough that you need to know how to avoid them.

• Do not make the mistake of going to any audition (obvious natural habitat)
• Do not mention that you are affiliated with the media
• Do not ask the one person in the room wearing shades INDOORS what they do
• Do not look at someone vaguely familiar in a media setting/ industry party who is trying too hard to be noticed.
• If they start a conversation with ‘do you know……’, leave, they might just be asking for directions to the toilet, but you don’t want to take the chance that you would have to hear about their theory of dressing like hookers to get a job.
• If someone earnestly tells you they studied Mass Communications and did their NYSC at some unknown production company, run!

If all else fails, and you get stuck with a faux actor, you have 3 options:

• Suddenly develop some debilitating pain/ illness that requires you to go at least 20 yards away from them
• Explain very loudly if necessary that you do not have anything to do with media industry, and instead work as (find an uber boring job that has absolutely nothing to do with the media like a morgue attendant)
• Finally if the above fails reply with ’you know I was casting for my new movie but your incessant talking just turned me off you’!