Oscar Parties: Who Is Max Loong?

Oscar presenter James Franco will host his after Oscar party at the Supperclub in the converted Vogue Theatre just 100 yards from the Kodak Theatre. The owners of the Supperclub on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are Jerry Garcia, Abdi Manavi, and Max Loong.

Max Loong, presenter

Oscar Parties usually are held at the most prestigious clubs in Los Angeles. Oscar presenter James Franco has chosen the new Supperclub as the venue for his after Oscars party. The Supperclub opened only in November 2010 but is already on the way to becoming one of the top venues to go to. This may have to do with its concept of entertainment, or it may be down to its location just 100 yards from the Kodak Theatre.

Owners Jerry Garcia, Abdi Manavi, and Max Loong certainly did their homework to make a success of their venture. While Jerry Garcia and Abdi Manavi are of local vintage, the question is: Who is Max Loong?

Max Loong’s father is Malaysian of Chinese descent, his mother is Swiss. The family moved to Switzerland in 1983 where Max did the usual school run. In 2000 aged 20, he landed his first TV job with Swiss private TV station VIVA Swizz. He soon became the face of the station and over three years interviewed over 300 show business A-listers.

In 2004, Max Loong joined the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute in Los Angeles as an alumnus. It was during his time there that he met Jerry Garcia and Abdi Manavi. He also had several appearances in independent films while studying.

In 2006, he joined MTV Southeast Asia in Singapore. Amongst other shows, he hosted the award winning MTV Mobbed. Max Loong’s personal website is a typical Swiss understatement. While he names MTV Mobbed as one of the shows he hosted, he forgot to mention that he regularly reached 200 million viewers. I don’t know how many viewers Oprah reaches, but Simon Cowell battles to get 10 million interested. In 2007, Max Loong was for the first time listed amongst the 100 most influential Swiss personalities and received the Elle ‘Breakout Star of the Year’ award.

But while working for MTV, he didn’t let his acting drop out of sight. He played in Swiss and French films and series; with Swiss Television he made a drama series called Adventure Max; and he starred in Singapore’s Emmy nominated comedy series First Class. He has regular engagements in Switzerland and Singapore as well as other Asian countries; and now he has business in Los Angles as well.

Max Loong has family in Switzerland and Malaysia and a girl friend in Singapore, too. This alone would make him clock up air miles like few others, but with his professional engagements now covering the globe, he’ll be able to make use of frequent flyer discounts no end.

Roping Max into the Supperclub was a smart move by Jerry Garcia and Abdi Manavi. From his TV shows, Max knows all the right people in Los Angeles and abroad without seeming to suck up to them by being a local guy; and as a host he should do well, too. When living in Zurich, he usually managed to become the soul of any party he attended without dominating its centre. That would, in my opinion, be the perfect way to host any party. And despite all this, he is refreshingly absent from the gossip pages that sell scandals for news.

And before you run off to book your table at the Supperclub, check the prices!

Further reading
Strictly Gay Dancing
Boxer on Ice
Splash: Tom Daley on ITV 1

FC Barcelona: Where Did It Get Its Colours From?

FC Barcelona is one of the best known football or soccer clubs in the world. One of the questions coming up every now and then is: How did it come by the colours blue and red?

Cristiano Ronaldo underwear model

The discussion about these colours has been going on almost as long as the club existed. There are several hypotheses being put forth in books, in the net and by TV stations. They all have one thing in common: They can’t be proven one way or another. I will try to sort it out by pointing out what might be at least plausible as opposed to plain flights of fancy. Some very weird claimants to fame have met my eye while I searched the net. The one person who never commented on it was Joan (or Hans) Gamper, one of the founders of the club and five times its president.

Hans Gamper was born near Zürich in Switzerland. He moved to Barcelona in 1898 where he changed the use of his given name to Joan. In 1899, he co-founded the club together with local English and Spanish friends. The colours and the coat of arms were adopted at that time and there are no records on the issue of what criteria were applied in the choice. The club’s colours were and are blue and red.

Prior and up to his move from Switzerland, Hans Gamper lived in Basel and was a member of its local football (soccer) club FC Basel founded in 1893. As he was also its playing captain in the season leading up to his move to Barcelona, a connection between the two clubs is at least plausible. FC Basel has used the colours blue and red from its inception. Depending on the language you read it in, Wikipedia either agrees, tentatively agrees, or refutes this claim. It might be added in favour of FC Basel that the design of the leather ball and the use of yellow are identical with FC Barcelona; the fact that both clubs use the shortening of FCB might have swayed Hans Gamper in that direction, too, when discussing the use of colours for the new club.

The puzzling question now is: Where on earth did the FC Basel get its colours from? Some people claim that the colours are the national colours of the State and Republic of Ticino in Switzerland. They are partly correct, as the colours of FC Basel derive from that source. As an older club had already claimed the traditional colours black and white that stand for the Canton and Republic of Basel, the colours of Ticino were chosen instead. Despite the geographical distance, Basel and Ticino traditionally had very close ties as they had been tied up into one diocese by the Vatican and the Bishop of Basel therefore was also responsible for the southernmost tip of Switzerland. The colour scheme of red and blue in Ticino’s coat of arms had been inverted by the founders of FC Basel to blue and red.

This primary inversion by the club’s founders makes the claim of FC Basel as a model for FC Barcelona more acceptable to me than the Canton and Republic of Ticino’s direct claim. FC Barcelona’s colours are inverted, too, and there would have been no reason to do so in the case of the Catalan club. Any reasonable link between Ticino, Barcelona, or Hans Gamper is completely missing, which puts this claim into the area of flights of fancy. Nice try, though.

Further claims I found were those made by FC Zürich in Switzerland, as Gamper was one of the co-founders of that club in 1896, too. The club’s colours are blue and white; the red seemingly just appeared out of thin air. There are many other curious claims and stories on the net with some of the legends dating back to the earliest years of the club. Most probably the colours were chosen on a whim by the founders without any thought to precedents, but in Catalonia at least the FC Basel is considered as precedent.

FC Barcelona owns and runs the largest stadium in Europe, with a capacity of up to 98,000 fans. The stadium is also held in the colours of blue and red. It is known by the name of Camp Nou, though it had been planned to call it Camp Joan Gamper in 1957 when it was first built at its present location. At the time, Dictator General Franco vetoed the name on grounds of his personal hatred against the founder of FC Barcelona.

FC Basel has the largest stadium in Switzerland with a capacity of up to 40,000 fans. It is also held in blue and red. It is officially named St Jacob’s Park, but nobody bothers with that. It is just called ‘Joggeli’ (pronounce it ‘yoggaelee’) in Alemannic.

As both clubs have been playing against each other in the European Champions League in 2008, the colour question has been readdressed several times from all sides. FC Barcelona’s archives give no answer to the question, wherefore we may look forward to many more discussions on this topic and probably many more spurious claims, too.

Further reading
Europa League: Chelsea FC vs FC Basel
Borussia: Not (Quite) Soccer History
Gay Soccer Players