RESEARCH IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS

Ball Ball Ball, Footie Footie Footie.

2010-06-13T16:49:00.005Z

Like swine flu or SARS, 'World Cup Fever' has gripped the nation. You have a team in the sweep stake at work right? Previously uninterested friends and colleagues now have lengthy explanations and heated opinions on why Ivory Coast are dark horses and how to solve the problem on the left wing, right?

It's like when England won the rugby, but worse - because the England football team don't win anything. They don't come close. But people think they might. People are idiots.

Clarence Seedorf said today on TV that Spain and England were his picks to go all the way. After the USA match this is. He's half an idiot.

Now I'm not the world's biggest football fan - but I do like it. I don't however, like the England football team. As a unit.

I couldn't say I have the same level of hate for every individual player, and I recognise that as players, there are some good ones - but when they come together - and attempt to play together - there's automatic contempt in my heart.

I'll never own an England football shirt, or likely go to a match (unless there's a pretty good chance that they'll be beaten, badly), but I will watch their games in the World Cup - and I'll enjoy it. Last night for example, I didn't get out of work till after 7, with the match starting at 7.30 - so on my way to a pub to watch the game I had the double whammy of 5 live for commentary while streaming TV through my iPhone so I didn't miss anything. Those are not really the actions of a man who hates his own national team, is it?

Why watch the game at all? If I'm so down on the poor bastards why not simply ignore them every time they play? Because I have to watch. I like to watch them score an early, usually flukey goal. Then I like to see them fail to take hold of a match. Then I like to see the equaliser. Then they usually try again for a bit, and a bit more right at the end. There's usually one in-form striker who receives little support, or is marked out of the game. A defender will be routinely outpaced by an opposition attacker. They'll play 4-4-2, because in the past it has worked wonders.

I think I'm waiting for an epiphany. Some moment where the tide turns and they surprise me. It isn't coming.

Why would you take Jamie Carragher? Why would you even ask him? Why not just go into the dressing room and tell your other defenders that although you picked them for your squad, that in fact you don't really think they're up to it and are going to talk to an old slow man and beg him to come back and play with them because that's the level of faith you have in their abilities. Right before the World Cup, potentially the most important run of games in their lives is obviously the right time to do this.

It's a shame he couldn't convince poor blind Paul Scholes to come too - one of the few England players I actually like. He probably would have put him on the left wing though.

I'm ranting like I care, which in a way I do. But I don't want them to win. I'm glad Heskey is there. Of course he is, who else would they send? Someone who can score goals? Someone who can pass? He's good in the air isn't he? Isn't he? No.

He's big. That's about it.

I'm entertained by the way Wayne Rooney is stranded in the middle of the park - constantly having to drop to midfield to get a pass, with wingers punting crosses with the accuracy and thought of a baby calf being tasered while choking on a golf ball.

If I was in charge I'd send half the squad to the Gulf of Mexico with some kitchen roll and a Dyson, where they would be more use.

I've strongly considered the possibility that it's because I can't remember a time when we were good. Italia 90 is the closest I guess, but even then the memory is sketchy - I was 9, and not a big football fan yet. I can remember watching games, but not really what happened. To me they've always been a let down, and the blind optimism of both football fans I know and the sufferers of World Cup fever just sickens me a bit. 1966? Sunderland have won an FA Cup since then but we're not under any delusions when the draw comes back around.

I could rant about tactics and players all day but it's a team I have no real interest in seeing do well, so it feels like a waste of time. I like the World Cup, the range of teams and styles and the inevitably entertaining matches, but to me England are dull, predictable, and without inspiration.

We'll get out of the group, scrape through to the quarters and the inevitable penalties will happen. That's me being optimistic.

The sooner they get knocked out, the sooner things get back to normal. Can you imagine what it's going to be like when the Olympics arrive?

I'm emigrating.

Visual AIDS.

2009-08-25T00:14:00.006Z

It's damn hot.

I have returned from the trip home to visit the family, my last holiday of 2009, with a great deal of sitting around doing very little and eating too much. In a good way. While there on a uncharacteristic journey out of the house I found a Lens shirt for £10. Bargain, no?

I arrive at football in my fetching new Lens shirt only to be told that the red and yellow hoops look uncannily like the colours sported by Harry Potter's Quidditch team. That's right readers, I've bought a Gryffindor football shirt. Bollocks.

I'm not even wearing a bib this week.

I've done drawings this week. I started off doing highly detailed and exact pictures on Photoshop. This was taking ages, like really ages. I could feel myself getting older. The downside of this is you now get rudimentary pictures done on paint. The upside is you get a blog before a week on Wednesday. YAY.

The teams this week were disturbingly similar to last weeks, with the infamous drubbing. Francois, Paine and Brownbill all on the same side - with the return of the not too sluggish Leeming filling in for a V festival attending Egner (apparently they had a Domino's Pizza there - what's the fucking poitn if they don't deliver to your tent?). This team is pacey. Our team which includes Nolan, Shafeie, Watts, Miranda and myself - made up for a lack of pace with aggression and disregard for personal safety. It was all to play for.

It started off as we feared it would. The speedy bibs doing all the running, as well as all the passing, shooting, and having of the ball. Regardless of this they don't tear off into a massive lead, luckily, and the game proceeds tightly.

Want to see a picture yet? Good.
Pretty self-explanatory I think. Ball comes to Blackett, Blackett plays it over the top to Nolan, who with his back to goal spins to volley into the net past Maguire. Who was helpless. As it says, an excellent goal.

The quick team make a habit of attacking down wings, Paine and Leeming making runs and attempting to dribble through before sending the ball into the middle for someone to lash home. Occasionally it works and they begin to build a lead. All too often for both teams defenders are caught short, the rest of their team having gone forwards to join the attack. By the time the rest of the team drop there has either been a goal or the attack has broken up and they have a chance to counter - the below diagram illustrates this...

Usually a misplaced shot will rebound past the attackers and land kindly at the feet of the opposing team, allowing him and his slowly retreating team-mates to turn around and bear down on a lone defender and goalkeeper. It is mainly down to the agonisingly inaccurate finishing of both teams that the scoreline doesn't reel away into the realms of cricket scores.

This is also helped by some astonishing tackling by Shafeie. As has been mentioned before - the boy can lay himself in front of any attack and like pavarotti at a buffet the ball makes a bee-line for his legs/body/face and will rebound to safety. Inspiring.

For me though, the story of the game was a prolonged bout of what I had previously only seen in small doses. Now and again Watts will get a bee in his bonnet, and chase down someone with a tenacity and focus not normally present in his game. This game he did that, but for like ten minutes. It was wierd. It was like watching Ash go nuts in 'Alien'. He was all over the place, chasing everyone down, surging forward, tackling hard, on a mission. Below is but a small example of his tracking during this spell of Joe Pesci-ish ferocity.

He's the red dot. I've coloured too many dots yellow, so it makes the sides uneven - unintentionally. I think the guy furthest to the top left was white too. I think it's Miranda goal hanging. Watts ran around him anyway, probably kicked him too. He was a man possessed. I quizzed him later as to what caused this surge of aggression.

'I was angry. Everytime I passed the ball to someone they scored, everytime someone passed the ball to me I missed. I wanted to score.'

I 'm sure he did score. Final score was 20-18 to the fleet footed bibs, a good close game. But hot. Maybe we could have edged it on another day, and maybe Watts could have put a couple more away, but I'm not going to argue with him - I'm pretty convinced that during his ten minutes of tenacity all he was seeing was...

Which is probably what Maguire sees most weeks. He came out of goal at the end by the way. Had a few shots. Missed the lot. Coincidence?

Carry On Kicking

2009-08-19T20:48:00.002Z

For fucks sake.

You know how sometimes things just don't go your way? You leave your house to go to work, and as you round the street corner your bus is pulling away from the bus stop. Somebody else got the last chicken pasta thing from Boots that you wanted for your lunch. That girl you like likes your best mate.

Remember when the England football team had to beat San Marino by seven goals to qualify for something or other (I'd know for what but I dislike the England football team so haven't looked it up)? I think Graham Taylor was in charge. About three minutes into that game the normally reliable Stuart Pearce toe poked an atrocious back-pass towards David Seaman, only for an attacker to nip past the gobsmacked Pearce and score past the hapless Seaman.

That happened at football this week. Twice.

I did it once, plus Miranda Fuckwit did it as soon as he arrived ten minutes late.

He'd had a big Sunday dinner about 5. Me and Egner had big Sunday dinners about 4. Turns out big Sunday dinners are the enemy of playing football, as it feels like you're running around with a rugby ball in your gut.

Unfortunately me, and Egner, and Miranda Fuckwit were all on the same side - we were all wearing red y'see. We also had Nolan and Watts, luckily they weren't playing as utterly shit as us three. Still two against five isn't really fair - and the lack of our usual silky skills told. It told hard. It told like a blind granny in handcuffs being beaten by Jason Statham with nun-chucks on red bull.

22-6 I think the final score was. This is bad. To call Miranda 'out of sorts' is doing the term 'out of sorts' an injustice. Fucking diabolical liability sounds more like it. At least me and Egner were trying to..er..try.

It's an odd experience to describe - being worse at something you're not very good at to start with. The feet feel heavier than usual. Each change of direction is more effort than it should be, running anywhere takes ages, when you do finally get the ball and kick it it doesn't go where it's meant to. In your head you're not doing anything differently from normal - not that everything goes to plan normally - but it's not usually a case of every single thing going wrong.

I scored a goal too. What's with that? By fluke I intercepted the ball, try to go forward. In my cack handed haste I knock the ball too far in front of me, so far in fact I have to sprint to try and retain control of it. My original plan is to pass it to the waiting Nolan to the left, but somehow my right big toe tips it past the defender, and I miss-hit it as hard as I can (which isn't as hard as I can, because obviously that goes wrong too), and it somehow squeaks past Maguire into the net. Fucked, barely any of it intentional.

The highlight of Egner's game is a deliberate nutmeg on Maguire, but he too shares my disappointment in being a useless bugger for an hour.

The opposing team has the pace this week. Paine, Francois, Brownbill - all fast - plus some guy subbing for Shafeie who is a childhood friend of Paine's. I can't remember his name but he was a striker. So quick, and seemed to enjoy shooting. From anywhere, literally. Half-way line? Too close, bit further back please. Pain in the arse.

Taking your turn in goal was like being in front of a firing squad. I felt in real danger of having the ball booted at my testes, perhaps with such velocity that one/both could be burst - leaving me needing both an ambulance and of course the police.

Maybe a fire engine too.

My first touch bounces off my foot as if it was a brick. Tackling or cutting out passes happens seldomly, and randomly. I feel like I'm in some kind of 'Carry On' version of Sunday Night Football - only horrifically, less funny. Lame.

Next week I'm not eating anything. I will however be sitting on train beforehand for a few hours and then lugging a large rucksack around London for a bit - I feel it will prepare me well for the main event at eight. Better than a large Sunday lunch will anyway.

2009-08-09T23:43:00.003Z

Hello. I missed last week. I'm a cunt.

Or, 'an absolute cunt' who 'everybody hates more than usual' and who is a 'fucking fuck'.

It's a good thing I'm dead inside or it would nearly hurt my feelings.

I manage to get there this week, with kit and everything. It's the busiest I've ever seen it. There are big gangs of people all around the sports centre - there's music playing - children laughing. I have no idea what is going on. The main thing going through my mind is 'I've got red shorts and socks with a blue and yellow shirt - I'm going to look like a twat walking to the pitch form the changing room.' Bugger.

Luckily on exiting said changing room the crowds have localised slightly and I can slip past undetected.

As we start two members haven't yet turned up = Rush keepers.

Teams, they line up.

Team A (Bibs, yet to turn up)

Maguire
Paine
Blackett
Egner

Team B (Wouldn't be wearing bibs even if we had them)

Shafeie
Nolan
Francois
Watts

Despite the usual occurrence in rush keeper games of the keeper doing a Schmeichel to the opponents 3rd and leaving his vulnerable area unprotected - leading to many, many goals - the game starts out tight. Tackles are working, passes being cut out, shots blocked. Maguire takes it upon himself to go on a couple of jinky runs forward and apart from quickening his teammates heart rates to dangerous levels no bad comes of it. Weird.

Soon enough Brownbill and the terminally late (but strangely untouched by swineflu) Miranda show their faces and Maguires brief role as an 'attacking minded goalkeeper' is over. Miranda with Team B, Brownbill donning a bib.

It stays tight.

Eventually the bibs start to make breakthroughs - grab a few goals in succession and develop a lead. Maguire is doing save type things and Paine and Brownbill are dribbling more than a boxer dog after a stroke. Egner supplies support and pressure - like a sports bra with a ponytail. Blackett, of course, stays behind. Then goes forward and kicks the ball as hard as he can at Shafeie's face when he's on the floor. Like a cunt would.

There is controversy around where exactly the keepers area begins and ends. If the keepers arse is still inside the line, is the keeper inside the line? If the ball is moving and within touching distance is it legal to touch/kick it? Who knows? Not me. we don't play full 5-a-side rules or nothing would happen without a stoppage - maybe there is room for a full 'Sunday Night Football Book Of Rules And Regulations' to be drawn up. Stuff like the rules surrounding the box, what is a legal challenge, if someone forgets their kit how many times/different people should call them a cunt, etc.

Nolan twice breaks down the right hand side and toe pokes the ball through Maguire's legs and into the net from the tightest of angles. After that when Maguire goes to close down a player his legs are shuffled together like Siamese knee twins or something. So people start shooting around him. He resorts to his initial method of flailing and charging, ending up on his arse at the VERY EDGE of the area. It sounds like I'm making fun but fucking hell it doesn't half work.

Team B have made inroads into the Bibs initial lead, and both teams are still competitive, still pushing. It's too hot and legs are starting to go but neither side will give in. Team B are pulling back more and more - Watts, Nolan and Francois are outnumbering the bibs defence and spreading the play past the defenders.

Egner, Brownbill and Paine combine for a zig-zagged one touch route to goal - Brownbill and Paine persistently finding the corners.

Miranda has been gone for two weeks, and it shows. Normally a goal-hanger extraordinaire - he is off the pace. Without his usual touch and eye for goal he is a less effective component in his team than in other weeks - who needs a goal hanger who isn't scoring?

I forget the score, but I don't care. I think the bibs won, but I'm not sure - plus it doesn't matter. It was good, very good. So good that if I was a squirrel it's possible my guts may have exploded out of my chest from the sheer awesomeness of it all. But I'm not a squirrel. I'm a cunt.

2009-07-27T19:32:00.002Z

Tackling is a simple business. They have the ball, you want them not to have the ball anymore, you go get it. Incredibly simple.

It can however, go wrong. You might not get the ball. You might get the ball and a bit extra. You might miss out the ball altogether and get a lot extra. But this is what happens in football. If everybody did everything perfectly all the time there would be a lot of nil-nil draws - or ten-ten draws. Either way, in reality there is the occasion where somebody will win and somebody will lose. Somebody scores more goals, somebody makes more saves, somebody gets tackled and someone else successfully tackles more often. But it can be close.

I'm late for football - by arriving five minutes early.

The teams have already lined up.

Team A (Bibs)

K. Maguire
J. Brownbill
B. Watts
B. Francois
D. Blackett (in Jr size bib, like a walrus in a boob tube)

Team B (rocking the no-bib look for summer)

R. Paine
S. Leeming
D. Nolan
C. Egner
H. Shafeie

No Diego Miranda this week, luckily Leeming steps up to the plate - even after two hours earlier in the day of 'playing on the swings' and 'skipping'. Even sides. Wahay.

It starts tight - neither side creating much in the way of a clean cut chance. Blackett and Francois take up station in front of Maguire, Watts and Brownbill leading the charge. Nolan as ever starts forward - Shafeie at the back - Leeming and Paine in free roles either side, tracking and pushing. Finally the Bibs start to pull into a lead - Brownbill's dribbling earning him space and opportunities against Egner in goal.

The early part of the game in dominated by either ineffective attacking or half decent defending depending on your point of view.

Speaking as one who spends most of his time wandering left and right behind the half-way line, I tend to rely on luck and past experience more than anything else. I'm the slowest there, pace and footwork wise - so can't really recover when mistakes are made - unless the attacker takes too long. I've been playing with the same people for a long time, I know some of their tricks, which way they would like to go, how often they'll try and drag it back or muscle past me. Or simply run around me - which works a disturbing amount of the time. I try to be a pain. I try to block off avenues and nick at the ball even if I know I'm not going to gain control of it, just to try and make them uncomfortable. My feet aren't fast enough to wait for them to make a move and react - I have to predict, or play the odds. The overall strategy is to get in the way as much as possible and be an annoyance. This should be a surprise to no-one I play with.

From what I've seen Shafeie's tactic is to be everywhere at once. More than anyone else he'll fling himself to the ground to get in the way of a shot or to cut out a pass - frequently it works. He doesn't know when he's beaten and is forever stretching a leg out to hook the ball away - and it's very effective. In this match he is pretty much single handedly cutting out or breaking up any early counters from the Bibs. They're in his pocket.

Obviously though it 'Sunday Night Football' so the goals do come - at both ends. Nolan breaks from the left and scores a mirrored copy of his first time volley into the far bottom corner from a couple of weeks ago. Watts hits a swerving side foot shot into the top right. Brownbill dribbles from his own left hand side, jinking past pretty much the whole Bibless team and finishes from the right hand side of the goal. Nolan in denied a header from a pinpoint Paine cross - who himself was denied a shot from range by the post at the top right. Later he will dink the ball over Blackett before bustling past Brownbill to knock the ball past Maguire for a well taken goal - only marred slightly by the sight of Maguire somehow launching his boot off the side of the pitch, hitting a floodlight post in his attempt to deny Paine his moment. Leeming is rewarded for his persistent work down the right with a shot slotted into the far left corner of the goal off the outside of his left boot - of course outpacing Blackett to get the opening. During the course of the game Blackett manages to influence the ball with his face, arse, balls, stomach, and hand. Less so with his feet, although he does manage to kick the ball into Paine's face - and nearly lose his knee up the same players anus. Sterling work from Maguire helps to keep Team B at bay - and despite a late rally it is the general opinion Team A came out on top - with no official final score line available.

An incident reminiscent of the old days of Sunday football rears it's head at the end of the game - with a player taking exception to the manner in which he has been tackled in the game. Not the atmosphere you hope to finish such a closely fought game with, and an unfortunate end to an otherwise highly enjoyable night. Hopefully the video tape from the fourth official will clear it up and all will be well next week.

Near (Post) Dark

2009-07-19T22:32:00.004Z

Dear Keith.

Do you think I enjoy this? Do you imagine each Sunday I drag my arse across London in the hope that after an hours worth of football I can come home and write about a hissy fit or a sit down huff? You dominate these weekly blogs in a way no-one else can - you command the drama and influence the mood of the game - you have all the power, Keith.

It starts in the warm up. Recently we have started a game of piggy in the middle before the game starts proper, very simple. Someone in the middle, everyone else passes it around them until they get a touch, then the last person to touch it before them goes in the middle, incredibly simple. Obviously this usually involves people running around trying to close down the player in possession, cover angles, that sort of thing.

Not you Keith.

You refuse. You'll stand dead in the middle of everyone. You won't close down. You won't move. Usually you won't even unfold your arms. You ruin it.The ball comes to you and you punt it past someones head at velocity, no direction, no thought. The game has to stop, it ceases to have function. Before the game has even begun you're making enemies, not playing for the team, doing what you like.

Teams this week - 4 on 5 - Shafeie is away moving house, no sub. On your team you have Francois, Egner, Blackett, Miranda. A full team - against Nolan, Watts, Brownbill, and Paine. They have rush keeper, gaping goalmouth most of the time. I'd keep you all in suspense but it isn't really worth it. 35-28 final score. In an hour. 63 goals in an hour. You won Keith, your team did it - in an hour you let in 7 goals less than no goalkeeper at all would have - this is a success.

But no, you're right - it's a team effort. It's our victory too. Without our sterling efforts in defence it could have been much worse.

I'd recount some goals but it's difficult - after 63 of them they kind of all meld together.

Last week I talked about the waiting, the when and not if of the implosion of your temperament that changes the atmosphere and signals your mental defeat. It happened at 20:09 tonight, and I don't think we started playing properly till 5 past. It was that one goal that is innocuous and justified in the eyes of everyone else - yet manages to snap through some barrier in your head that separates the guy who tries and gets back up, determined to make saves and play the game, and the guy who will sit down after every goal, crouch in the middle of his goal until the last second, and start attempting to save one on ones in the manner displayed below.

Honestly, this is what it looks like. Before the ball is struck your head turns away, one leg is cocked and the body twisted, turning away from the attacker. It confuses me. I know you're capable of good, even great saves. I've seen you stretch and palm away shots heading for the top corner. I've seen you rush out and be brave in one on ones, spreading yourself, getting low, covering angles. I remember a game where Miranda repeatedly was getting behind the defence and you were saving everything, for about ten minutes - then one goal - and every time after that by the time he hit the ball you'd jumped in the air and twisted away from him. It's bizarre.

I don't think this (blog) is going to help. I don't think the ridicule and 'cyber-bullying' does you any good - so part of the blame is ours. But encouragement doesn't either. No-one cares as long as you're attempting to make saves, it doesn't matter if its a horrendous blunder of a goal. It's the near post trickler, the bobbling miss-hit that you languidly wander towards - no hurry - no dive.

To be fair the game this week was, well, weak. Uneven sides never help, and the whole thing had an air of pre-season friendly. Maybe in a more competitive environment it would be easier for everyone to keep going for the full hour - tighter game, harder fought. It might feel like it matters more.

You bummed me out Keith. I felt like I was wasting my time. I still am now. I'm tired of writing about what wobbler you've thrown. Sort it out. I don't travel an hour and a half each way on a Sunday to play football with people who give up after ten minutes. I want you to be good Keith, I want you to enjoy Sunday nights, so I can too. You ruined this one.

Shafeie too. Moving house bastard.

2009-07-13T23:53:00.002Z

Hello. I've been on my holidays. I have sunburn and everything. The tops of my forearms have a very nice tan and the bottoms of my forearms are the usual white/translucent blue colour. As it should be. The backs of my hands have started to peel also but that is just minging.

Anyway.

The teams line up.

Team A (Bibs)

C. Egner
H. Shafeie
J. Brownbill
D. Blackett
D. Miranda

Team B (minus Bibs)

D. Nolan
K. Maguire
R. Paine
B. Francois
B. Watts

It's like a ticking clock. It just hangs there in the air, unspoken and impending. It's a matter of when rather than if - and everybody knows it. At some point Maguire is going to have a wobbler.

Remember Gallas doing his little sit down protest? Like that but repeatedly - over and over again. This is how much the goalkeeper cares about the game. Every game. Every goal.

Luckily his team starts well, better than well in fact - before long they are 6-2 up, and making the Bibs look silly. Blackett has missed the last two weeks and nearly managed to pass out during the warm up, he doesn't start well. Nolan is holding the ball up and laying off to Paine and Watts - Francois cleaning up at the back.

Nolan bustles past two defenders on the right hand side next to the wall, the ball badonking up into the air to fall in front of the attacker, who promptly volleys it low into the far left corner. Watts and Paine down the wings are frequently unmarked and consequently in possession, in front of goal, with time. Goals happen. It's going very well.

Yet slowly but surely the Bibs start to claw their way back into it - helped mainly by the teams inability to recognise when they are being soundly beaten. Miranda is working the corners, and Brownbill's spaghetti legs work their way through defenders, dragging back and weaving on a regular basis.

They know. They know it only takes a certain type of goal. It doesn't have to be a good goal, or a particularly bad one - just one that on Maguire's head he should have saved, then the walls begin to crumble.

Team A get some tenacity. Shafeie seems to be in the way of everything - usually horizontally. Francois has started to drift forward to join attacks, leaving Miranda and Brownbill free to break with little cover at the back - another nail in the coffin of Maguire's mindset. When he does retrieve the ball he often launches it forward in slightly random directions. Like over the fence and off the pitch.

Brownbill breaks forward and toys with the keeper, dummying until he falls on his back like a drunk kitten - then simply lifts the ball over his flapping into the net.

Team B are feeling the effects, and begin to rush passes - or run into multiple defenders before finding another option. Egner and Shafeie are cutting out passes and joining Miranda and his massive hair up front. Blackett somehow finds himself forwards but manages to shoot over the goal, fence, and a building outside - the ball finally coming to earth via the window of a mini-van. A short while later he will lift a back-heel across the pitch to Egner for him to calmly slot home past Maguire - the rotund defender will likely never have a finer moment.

The ball becomes stuck at the top of the fence over the Bibs goal courtesy of Francois. On retreiving it he 'accidentally' throws it into the face of Egner while he swigs some water. Hilarity ensues.

Maguire has all but given up, destroying the morale of his team and doing nothing but encouraging the Bibs. They won't win by a large margin, but win the Bibs do - through persistence and not a small amount of self-sabotage.

Father & Sun/Nine And A Half: Weak.

2009-06-21T23:53:00.004Z

It's Father's Day. It's hot. It's sunny. Again.

Due to unforeseen circumstances there were uneven teams tonight. This is nobodys fault. Except Maguire's.

The unforeseen circumstances people also made sure that this reporter was slightly late to the match. London buses and tubes are not what they were under Red Ken. They seem to be getting worse.

The teams have already lined up.

Team A (Bibs)

B. Francois
H. Shafeie
C. Egner
T. Barnes (subbing for R. Paine)
S. Leeming (subbing for B. Watts)

Team B (Bibbynono)

D. Nolan
J. Brownbill
D. Blackett
D. Miranda
(K. Maguire absent due to the illustrated injuries featured in last weeks report - or a girly hangover)

So, nine men, one making his debut, one playing only for the second time...and the weather against them. The Michael Bay effect of Transformers II Revenge Of The Big Stupid Uni-Cycle arriving in cinemas to howls of delight from the children of the 80's and fan's of Megan Fox alike means the bright bright ever so bright sunshine now angles itself completely at anyone who dares to look to their left. This effectively means at any one time half of Team B are using their left arm as a sunblocking implement rather than for say, balance. Or pushing/grabbing/dragging a member of Team A around the place.

Barnes is here for a second time - his debut only a short while ago during the infamous 'week that could not be blogged'. His first game bordered on impressive, making up for a rustyness in touch and finesse with a terriers work rate, tenacity and vim. That's right I said vim. Leeming is an unknown quantity with a background in Parkour/Free Running or 'fannying about on steps and walls'. He is probably quite agile and quick then, maybe with some grace on the ball.

Leeming starts by looking quite agile and quick with some grace on the ball. He seems comfortable in possession with a respectable work rate, belying his recent inexperience with the sport. Barnes is continuing how he left it last time - chasing and digging for the ball, running back and forth. Miranda has taken up his usual spot in the opponents final third...hopping about with little flicks and his vaguely Farrah Fawcett style locks, every inch a flamboyant little Mexican goal-hanger.

Luckily this is suiting Team B, as with Nolan to play off the two of them are giving Shafeie and Egner a torrid time at the back. Nolan holds it and lays it off the Miranda and visa-versa. Brownbill arrives in support and the Bibs are in all kinds of trouble. Francois and Leeming are trying to provide attacking options and Barnes' inexperience is showing - his diligent tackling helping but not seeing the next pass to cut out till just too late.

Nolan receives the ball on the right hand side, running diagonally towards the right corner. At the opportune moment his rifles into the far left bottom corner. Clinical. Nolan is having a good night, having earlier scored a header. Before the night is out a lofted ball from Miranda (for some reason at his own left corner) will find Nolan's boot on the volley again on the right hand side, and the resulting shot will smash past a hapless terrified keeper.

As the game progresses Shafeie and Egner will make their presence felt further forward as the wave of tired legs hits their non-regular players. Shafeie rifles his own shot into the bottom left from the middle of the pitch, and Egner's passing is getting cleverer with each game, but to little avail. Francois has run himself out supporting Barnes and Leeming already - and the hold-up and support play from Team B's attacking threesome has run them ragged.

At the death Nolan will top off his night by lifting a cheeky lob over an onrushing Egner into the Bib's goal. Final score 23-8 to Team B.

Maguire may be back next week, then again he may not. He may not be needed or wanted on the evidence of these super-subs. Bright things are predicted for these two, and I don't mean more of Michael Bay's blinding sunshine.

The guy at the top? Some guy's dad. Not mine.

Sunday Sun

2009-06-14T23:19:00.003Z

It's hot. It's far too hot. It's been muggy as hell the last 3 days and everything feels heavier, sleepier. Transformers 2 is out on Friday so in celebration of this Michael Bay's dazzling sunshine has made a return to the bottom left corner of the pitch. The bastard.

The teams line up.

Team A (Bibs)

D. Miranda
H. Shafeie
C. Egner
J. Brownbill
B. Francois

Team B (No need for bibs, as they are all wearing red and white, like they organised it or something.)

D. Blackett
R. Paine
K. Maguire
B. Watts
D. Nolan

The blinding and harmful rays of the sun god Ra are to the right of Team B's goal - so as they face their goalkeeper to receive the ball, they see a nice hazy yellow glow and little else. Bonus. Paine decides not to pass an opinion of the outcome - seeing as he got it totally wrong last week. Maguire is not so cautious, and is complaining from the off - Team B have all the players he hates playing against - Brownbill, Francois and Miranda - psychologically he is already wounded, if not beaten. It's a strange breed who is psyched out before anything happens and when the other team are not trying to psych him out. At all. Good start.

About a minute later he has been nutmegged once and Team B are 2-0 down. Francois/Miranda receive a through ball - take a touch - and score. This will be a familiar pattern for the evening. Maguire is already taking a long time to stand up.

It's one way traffic, Team A are keeping the ball better, getting more forward and dropping quicker. Blackett somehow manages to be nutmegged by a cross. He's about 5 '9 at best, with an inside leg of about 30 cm, which should make this difficult. The problem may be that he is running around legs akimbo in a vain attempt to cut off passing angles - which usually only leaves a nice gaping gap between his Nikes. Maguire is nutmegged again.

The few goals Team B do manage to procure are the results of nice passing and movement, with often precise finishing. Too often they are forced to chase balls into corners, with crosses or cut-backs blocked or to no-one, and shots flying high and wide. Team A are zippity, chasing and closing, constant pressure even in the stifling heat - seeming less bothered running into the baking smog of Team B's final third, and scoring for fun.

Egner brings the ball forward through the middle, acres of space. Defenders are still divving up whether to close him down or cover the angles when suddenly with his left hand side to goal he chips it with his right foot off the left hand post into the top corner.

Maguire is hit in the face by the ball. He drops to the floor. He doesn't get up. He's not dead. It may have looked like this:

But apparently felt more like this:

His head was said to have felt swollen afterwards.

Luckily paramedics were not needed.

Paine smashes a shot from the right hand side across the goal and off the far post - rebounding almost straight back to him that nearly dismantles the goal, or at least shifts it a few inches to the left. Shortly afterwards Watts is hit in the thigh by Shafeie and is hobbling, it's the last straw in a poor performance from Team B. Blackett has been sluggish and dizzy for the last twenty minutes, and everyone else is tired of chasing lost causes. Maguire decides to come out of goal for the last few minutes and makes a good tackle. He also punts wildly and costs Team B a goal.

Final score? 26-9. Team B don't even make it to double figures, and Maguire and Nolan have been on the losing side two weeks in a row. Maguire vows not to play in goal next week.

Too right if you're on my team replies Miranda.

Aboot Last Night

2009-06-08T23:03:00.003Z

It's the coolest night in a while, we've had rain which makes a pleasant change from walking around in what felt like a kiln for the best part of two weeks. Last week's wasn't worth writing about. This week is different.

Blackett and Maguire are captains this week - although Maguire initially refuses for no apparent reason. He is only convinced when his demand of having first pick is met (in exchange for his team wearing bibs - which goes out of the window as soon as he picks Nolan).

The teams line up.

Team A (Bibs)

D. Blackett
C. Egner
R. Paine
J. Brownbill
B. Watts

Team B (No bibs despite their captain agreeing to wear bibs)

K. Maguire
D. Nolan
H. Shafeie
D. Miranda
B. Francois

Straight away Paine is expressing doubt as to what chance Team A have of winning. On paper, Team B have all the ball chasers - a defensive rock who likes to venture forward - a goal hanging Mediterranean - some kind of french yappy dog in the style of an arsenal player - and a forward who will also HAVE THE BALL OFF YOU IF YOU LIKE IT OR NOT. Also the only full-time keeper of the lot of us - who was due a good week.

Team A were equipped with a rubbed legged headache prone yet skillful all rounder - a defensive rock who doesn't really venture forward - a guy who looks far too at home in a Roma shirt - a passing whiz with an eye for goalposts - and a Forrest fan with the hair and pomp of an Argentinian full back. Honest. Hair like this.

Or maybe this.

But with a face like this.

Anyway.

Paines worst fears are realised. Team A are consistently second to the ball, too slow to drop, too wasteful and without the ball too often. They leak goals - 6 of them - without reply. Miranda and Francois are living up to their reputation and scurrying about like pigs after truffles, nipping toes in and catching a lone defender on the back foot. Things are looking bleak for Team A. Shafeie appears to have Paine in his pocket, and having missed the previous weeks game Brownbill and Watts are off the pace. Blackett's picks are looking naive and Watts rips out a ferocious shot only to see it skim off a post.

Even the combustible Maguire is looking handy between the posts, charging down and palming away what efforts Team A can produce. B are looking the sleeker and more coherent outfit.

Watts hits the woodwork again.

Then a breakthrough. Paine scores from the left hand side to pull one back for A, and Maguire takes a short while to stand up. This is a crack. The rest of the team sense it.

Team A start to run harder, close down faster and attempt to become a bigger pain in the backside for Team B. Eventually passes begin to run astray, more chances are created, Watts is hitting the outside of the goal like his life depends on it, even both posts with one shot. Goals begin to be pulled back. Team A are back-heeling like crazy.

Brownbill moves with the ball from the left diagonally towards the far right corner - at the opportune moment he back-heels it to his left where Paine is waiting to lash the ball into the far right corner.

Egner is one on one with Maguire who goes to ground too early - Egner has no choice but to use his new found Argentinian cojones to lift the ball over the hapless squirming goalie - who probably let out some kind of guttural wail of despair as he has to watch the ball float over his reach. Like a turtle on its back trying to flap at the sun. Nearly as good as this.

Nearly.

This does not mean Maguire is Schmeichel. Although he does like to go forward at ill advised times.

With the score tied, Blackett spots a massive pair of billboard tits staring at him from above the motorway, only visible from a small sliver of the pitch. He is momentarily distracted and Francois scores.

Nevertheless he shares the view with Nolan, as a gesture of good sportsmanship. Shortly afterwards Blackett would knee Nolan in stomach while challenging for the ball, in another example of exemplary conduct - no free kick is given. Watts hits the post again. Three crossbars and three posts.

Finally he scores, he whoops like he's just won the bingo.

Blackett takes a shot and manages to slice it straight into Brownbills balls before shouting 'OH FUCKING HELL'. He drops back to defend.

In an extraordinary turnaround Team A somehow go 18-10 up, with Maguire still making good saves - or it could have been worse. He does let in a trickler of a back pass from Francois, but is putting in one of his more solid displays no doubt. The scoreline is flattering for Team A, as the weeks game is tight and hard fought - competitive throughout the hour.

Miranda has begun to drift with the ball, hanging onto it for too long, being dispossessed and allowing Team A to break. Both teams are still marking tightly, giving keepers little option but to launch the ball forwards for their strikers to challenge for or run onto, usually with little effect. Tired legs begin to show in the last 5 minutes, but by then the game is all but over.

Team A will hang on to claim victory, but both should be proud of their nights work, it was the best in a while.

Sunday Girl

2009-05-24T23:51:00.003Z

The day has been heavy and the night swelters.

Newcastle United have been relegated from the Premier League, and the players are in good spirits in the changing room. Francois sports a retro French national shirt, which is strangely apt for an Arsenal supporter. Reliving past French glory. It has a massive collar, perhaps built to catch sloppily quaffed champagne or errant frogs-legs. Maybe it was inspired by Concord.

The teams line up.

Team A (Bibs).

D. Blackett
B. Watts
R. Paine
J. Brownbill
K. Maguire

Team B (Sans Bib).

H. Shafeie
D. Nolan
B. Francois
C. Egner

At the top left of the pitch the sun is setting, and makes looking into the corner impossible, you'd go blind. It's like a Michael Bay wet dream over there, and anything could happen in the blindness.

The sides are uneven to start, with the promise of a substitution to come -so for now we play unconventional 'Rush' rules. Team A obviously has the upper hand and slot numerous long range passes into the net past half keeper/half defenders. Of course none of this counts really until the final player shows up. Team A mutter between themselves about the probable causes of the players absence. It is generally agreed that it is down to living a life of low moral standards and ungentlemanly habits.

Which he finally does turn up he promptly scores past Maguire, who lasted a whole 3 and a half seconds of the actual game before conceding.

Revised Team B (Still Sans Bib).

H. Shafeie
D. Nolan
B. Francois
C. Egner
D. 'Late for my own funeral, and probably in the wrong church' Miranda

With Diego 'LFMOFAPITWC' Miranda and an actual fixed keeper it takes Team B approximately 10 minutes to completely dominate - nicely quashing the questions raised of his lifestyle.

Blackett has taken up his usual station on the edge of the D, and is advised by Maguire to 'Make sure we have two people back at all times, marshall them, you're Beckenbauer.'

'Beckenbauer went forward sometimes' Blackett replies.

Blackett is soon after put on his arse by Shafeie in the Michael Bay corner, in a very un-Beckenbauer like manner.

Without a gun and a badge attempts at marshaling would prove fruitless, so why bother. On multiple occasions Francois utilises his snippety Gallic pace to outstrip the Team A back line, usually with support from Nolan and Egner, Shafeie (Team B's very own Beckenbauer) providing occasional forward furrows and rock like tendencies at the back.

Team A gamely attempt to play it out from the back now and again with some success, but strangely rely on long throw balls from the back at head height to move forwards. Frequently these easily controllable passes are switched with other tried and tested techniques such as throwing to a player tightly marked or simply randomly toe punting the ball, relying on chaos theory and silently whispered prayers to an unlistening God. Also, there may have been finger-crossing involved, but this is notoriously difficult to achieve in goalkeeping gloves.

Nolan manages to nutmeg a Team A defender (whose name escapes me) twice with pulled back crosses from the corners. One of them is Michael Bay's fault. Egner is revelling in the prospect of a game against Newcastle next season and is chopping down attackers, spreading play, and generally being a pain in Team A's arse. The ball seems to spend twice as much time in the air bobbling about as as does on the floor. The rest of the time it is in the back of Team A's net.

Team A are tired of chasing the ball, what little passing moves Brownbill, Watts, and Paine can put together generally finish in a goal - but it is too much to stand up to the boorish tactics employed by the bibbed wonders on a whole.

By the end of the match Maguire will have conceded a sweet nutmeg and two (TWO - in a five-a side goal) headers. Apparently 'no-one is defending'. NO-ONE IS DEFENDING.

Blackett looks on incredulously, he's been past the half-way line about three times in 45 minutes. His goalkeeper clearly hasn't been paying full attention.

Brownbill's shot is saved, Blackett hits a post, Paine skies it and Watts shoots wide. This is how it goes.

Team A can smile briefly near the end as with no-one near him, the normally stable Nolan seems to spin round and send himself into some weird spasm or pirouette, and he crashes to the floor in front of goal. He is fine.

Everything has gone wrong for Team A tonight, but at least Newcastle went down - they don't have to come back next week for more humiliation.

When Sunday Comes

2009-05-17T22:21:00.003Z

Maguire isn't happy. He has read last weeks match report and it sitting tight lipped and silent in the changing rooms prior to kick off. 'My biggest critic is myself' he explains. I disagree.

It is claimed that the criticism leveled last week is a form of bullying. Cyber-bullying? Hmmmm. We'll see how he performs this week, whether or not he will warrant praise or scorn, big-upped or 'bullied'. Let's see.

The teams line up.

Team A (Bibs).

K. Maguire
R. Paine
B. Francois
H. Shafeie
B. Watts

Team B (Bibless).

D. Nolan
C. Egner
J. Brownbill
D. Miranda
D. Blackett

It's a scrappy start with handfuls of chances missed at both ends, shots flying wide from close range, misplaced passes, clumsy touches.

Eventually the game settles down and Team B take a two goal advantage, MAGUIRE AT FAULT FOR NEITHER. However, it doesn't take long for Paine and Francois to pull a couple back for the Bibs. Paine is twice denied nutmeg finishes by the thick and muscular thighs of Blackett taking his turn in goal, the ball squeezing past the well toned limbs in both instances, but vitally knocked off target.

The dapper English cricketer look sported by Watts seems to be inspiring him and rarely does a pass miss it's target. His laconic style juxtaposing well with the industry of Paine and Francois, working the channels like jet skis in shorts.

At the other end Miranda and Nolan are providing power play, giving Shafeie and whoever else is back a torrid time. A high ball from left to right finds Egner, who on the half-volley Yeboahs the shit out of it into the far left top-corner. MAGUIRE NOT AT FAULT.

A similar cross from the opposite side from Miranda finds the head of Blackett, but his nod towards the bottom corner is swatted away by Maguire - oddly reminiscent of the famous Pele/Banks save...

Maguire so far has been solid, and is extremely pleased with himself after the save, as he should be. The save isn't where the similarities between Banks and Maguire end, as both have hair loss issues.

On a similar note it is rumoured that Pele and Blackett share the curse of erectile dysfunction.

Normal service is soon resumed when after a messy tap-in is scored Maguire decides to let out a guttural scream to express his dissatisfaction with allowing the goal. Maybe he really is his biggest critic.

Shafeie has been in excellent stopper form at the back, frequently stopping attacks with an extended toe and cursory body check. Blackett shields the ball in the left hand corner and thinks the day is won when Shafeie goes to ground. But no. Even from on his arse Shafeie manages to get a foot around the ball and ruin Blackett's dream of not being successfully tackled, just once.

As the game progresses the legs of Francois and Paine win out, Egner and Blackett frequently stranded between the two as they race goalwards. Nolan is on about 10 for Team B, but the current count is in the favour of the Bibs.

Blackett receives numerous passes from Brownbill and Nolan in goal scoring positions, but elects to kick the ball high, wide, or at bits of Maguire the keeper can't move out of the way. Wasted chances are what hurt Team B tonight, with Team A wasting just as many, but crucially scoring just a couple more.

In the locker room everyone gets a biscuit. At the tube station Maguire opens his mouth to gag on an imaginary cock, just another Sunday night.

Sunday Night Lights

2009-05-10T22:46:00.002Z

Arsenal being utter shite is the main topic of conversation in the dressing room before kick-off, so much so the players have no time for their usual warm-up and head straight onto the pitch - ready to go.

The teams line up.

Team A (No Bibs).

Nolan. D
Brownbill. J
Paine. R
Egner. C
Shafeie. H

Team B (Bibs).

Maguire. K
Miranda. D
Francois. B
Watts. B
Blackett. D

We Begin.

Maguire takes his usual position between the sticks, with Blackett hanging back to provide cover. Team B will be relying on the pace of Francois, the passing of Watts, and the goalhanging of Miranda for attacking options. Team A meanwhile, have the power of Nolan, boyish enthusiasm of Paine, and the spaghetti legs of Brownbill as their main threats. Egner and Shafeie will largely go unmarked, allowing them to roam forward at will and add extra dimensions to the attack. Blackett will usually only go forward if there really is nothing else for it.

In the early stages it's a cagey affair - neither team running away with it - until the Bibs run up a 4-2 advantage on scrappy tap-ins and unfortunate rebounds. Keith 'Epileptic Cat' Maguire insists on shouting at his team to 'get back', even in some cases when they still have possession. Nolan has already rattled the frame of the goal.

The Bibs start taking potshots from way out, to no avail. Diego 'Carmen' Miranda doesn't seem to have his usual shooting boots on, plus he looks like a rentboy from an Almodovar film. He skies another shot.

Francois is running around with scant regard to personal safety, oddly reminiscent of a Sunday night footballer of old 'Crazy Horse' Zieciowski. He hits a wall. Kinda. He runs into 'Concrete Box' Nolan, and drops to the floor - the ref looks away but he gets a compassionate pause and audible wince from his fellow sportsmen. Nolan rattles the frame of the goal.

Some good work down the right hand side sees Brownbill spin and slot away a very tidy goal. He and Paine combine well now and again, and their intricately spun web leaves the Bibs looking silly. In an attempt to clear the ball Blackett somehow manages to toe-poke the ball into Nolan's crotch. The sportsmen wince.

About two minutes later the appropriately named Paine does the exact same thing to Blackett. Karma is working quickly tonight.

Maguire seems to be alternating between bravely saving shots and charging down advancing attackers, to doing some kind of chicken can-can and flailing about on his arse. Nolan rattles the frame of the goal. Maguire lauches another ball forward.

Blackett takes another bobbled throw out from Maguire, and as his touch lets him down for the 17th time this evening he is almost resigned to Paine closing him down and taking the ball from him. Luckily he gets away with it this time and gets it back to Maguire. Maguire launched the ball forward.

Nolan rattles the frame of the goal.

This reporter has long since lost count of the goals, and most of the Bibs seem to have given up anyway. Balls endlessly pumped into the corners for Miranda and Francois to chase have taken their toll, Watts is isolated in the middle and Blackett is weebling back and forth between multiple attackers in a vain attempt to win the ball. Team A have broken down the Bibs, retaining possession better, passing better, and knackering the Bibs out. It's becoming cruel.

Blackett is getting blurred vision, Watts, Miranda, and Francois are stranded. Maguire is a clusterfuck. Next week will be different.

Nolan rattles the frame of the goal.

Hmmm.

2008-12-30T20:54:00.012Z

I'm only doing fives this year. Plus it's nearly March - I'm busy, plus a good couple of handfuls of lame. Let's Go!

5. Pineapple Express.
I'm not sure about Seth Rogen. I don't think I like all his success. He also has a jew-fro (if that's massively racist then sorry I guess - I'm northern, I'm not sure where the lines are. Do I mean anti-Semitic? I'm complimenting it though, is that still bad?) - which would totally suit me, but I'd have to do a perm or something and that could make me a fat Lionel Richie/Kevin Keegan looking person. Which would be bad.
I love James Franco in this though, and the other guy - Footfist Way guy who's in everything now, he's indestructible in this, and it's awesome. I grinned (gran?) like a fool all the way through it, like I used to at school when Bottom was on TV. I just finished watching Freaks and Geeks also, which was great, and has Franco and Rogen in also. Recommended.

4. Wall-E.
Well good. Looks amazing. Sad. Happy. All that stuff. Robots are always cool - apart from the movie 'Robots' which I never want to see because I've already seen Robin Williams pretend to be a robot and don't really want to see him do a wacky one.
I don't want to ruin the end for people who haven't seen it, but the guys Chaplin all the way through - plus there are robot sidekicks like the guy in the picture. He's great. I think I still like The Incredibles better though.

3. The Diving Bell And The Butterfly.
I don't cry. Haven't done for ages that I can remember. Dead inside, I've been told, is the problem. I nearly cried during this though. It's a film about a guy totally paralyzed apart from like...one eyelid - and he writes a book with it. They concoct this tiny strap and harness to attach to his face and put pencil lead in it - then have a thin strip of paper on a slow conveyor rolling past the eye - and he scritches out messages in morse code.

Dot. Dash. Dash. Dot. Dot. Dot. Stop. Etc.

It's great and the bit that made me go a big wet one is the bit where he gets to shag a model. Not the bit with Max Von Sydow and the winky phone call. Definitely not.

2. Speed Racer.
I'm not a person with a valued opinion. If I recommend something to someone it takes someone else to also recommend it before they'll listen, and see it/listen to it. So my opinion alone is too lowly to be of any note A WHOLE OTHER PERSON -ANY OTHER PERSON can mention it being 'Alright' and suddenly people want to see it. It's bullshit. I actually had to pay for half of someones ticket to get them to watch this. Believe that? Incredible.
I loved it. Saw it three or four times in the cinema. Everyone I saw it with loved it - once I got the sons of bitches to watch the bastard. A close second.

1. There Will Be Blood.
It's yonks ago I saw this. Beginning of last year. Still the best thing I've seen in years. I got a free copy because two of my friends bought it and didn't like it. They said it was boring. I thought it was a massive ugly gargoyle of a guy running around to Bernard Herrman from beyond the grave in a black burning desert - ripping people heads off and staring down mountains. Amazing. Watch Hard Eight then watch this. John C. Reilly wants to be Will Ferrell now and Paul Thomas Anderson is doing epic Hitchcock following around Satan in a davy lamp. Gobsmacked I was.

Music? Music. I guess.

5. The Dodos - Visiter.Lo-fi plinky plonky stuff, like hipsters in lumberjack shirts listen to. It's all simple and scratchy and I listened to it pretty much all through autumn. I find it difficult to work out when stuff came out that I've been listening to. From last year I started listening to The Replacements, Midlake, a few others - who aren't from last year. Was In Rainbows last year? Goddammit.

4. Eagles Of Death Metal - Heart On.

These guys are fun. Josh Homme from maybe my favourite band Queens Of The Stone Age and a guy called Jesse 'The Devil' Hughes. A dude from Millionaire was in them when they first started but he's done one since then. They're still awesome though. I'm going to see them in April - I saw them in Koko a couple of years ago and it was more fun than should be allowed. They recently played in Soho in a ladies only gig. Men could go but they had to dress in drag to get in. Awesome. There's a song on this record called 'Solo Flights' which is the best song about masturbating I've heard in ages.

3.Mogwai - The Hawk Is Howling.
Seems like half the people I know saw them live last year, but I snoozed and loosed. even people I know who don't like them seemed to see them. Wankers.
This is the same producer as Young Team, and you can tell. It's not a new direction, or a twist on what they've done before - it's more of the same. Luckily I love Mogwai, so it's what I wanted.
It's like that AC/DC record that came out - it just sounded like AC/DC. So there wasn't a huge point, but because it sounded like what everyone likes them for in the first place - no-one was disappointed...it was a huge success. I think it was the second biggest selling album in the world last year. AC/DC. Not Mogwai. I think Clodplay were first. Bleugh.

Clodplay: Are Shite.

2. Deerhunter - Microcastle.
When I was googling for a picture of these guys I saw the lead singer for the first time. He's dead person skinny. He looks like wet cloth on twigs. I'm seeing them in May. I think it's freaked me out a bit. Seriously. I might have to not look at the stage when they're playing. I'll find a point above and to the left of them and concentrate on that. If I do happen to glance at the guy I'll tell myself it's a life-size Henry Sellick puppet, and that it's not a human person, but a fake band - like Gorillaz, or the Muppets. It's that or vomit. Maybe I'll wear sunglasses and pretend I'm cool. If I grin enough maybe people will think I'm trying to be like Jack Nicholson, and then a girl who wants to be like Lara Flynn Boyle will attach herself to me. Canny.

Ohwaitshesunhealthilyskinnytooandthatwillalsofreakmeoutabortabortabort.

The music is good though. I'll just face the other way.

1. TV On The Radio - Dear Science.
I don't really like lots of records from the first listen, it always takes me a few listens - then I have to leave it for a while - then come back to it - then I can decide if I like it or not. The ones I listen to and love instantly seems to be keepers more than anything else. 'Funeral' was one. 'Songs For The Deaf' was one. 'Trials Of Van Occupanther', 'The Bends', 'Either/Or'. That might be it. This is one. It's got a bit of everything, it does funky, jaggedy, droney, shouty, electricy, pretty much the lot. Dave Sitek is apparently some kind of production genius from what I can gather - and is also apparently the worst guitarist, which is why he plays guitar. I bought this and Mogwai on day of release - I don't really buy things on day of release, and Mogwai I've dipped in and out of, this has been constant from day one. Rocked my socks off.

I can't do books -I read stuff but I don't think any of it was from last year. Stuff that missed out on the lists? Special mentions for In Bruges, Kung-Fu Panda, No Country For Old Men (which should be in the top five really, but somehow isn't). In the music honorary shout-outs for Elbow, Girl Talk, Bon Iver (maybe year before...can't remember), Vampire Weekend, Lykki Li, Goldfrapp, and Albert Hammond Jr. Hammond made a song called Lisa which I listened to on repeat for about 3 weeks.

I got a ukulele and a harmonica for my birthday - so number one album next year may already be taken care of. If someone buys me a camcorder number one film is in the bag also.

2008-10-16T18:31:00.004Z

A few weeks ago David N set a 'meme' or something. I'm not sure what it is still. As far as I could gather I needed to find some films I hadn't seen and would like to...that weren't readily available. My definition of readily available is 'available on DVD in this country'. Consequently most of these can probably be imported through Amazon for about £2, so I should just pull my finger out and buy them - but for the sake of lists - here we go...

1. CQ (Roman Coppola 2001)

I like music video directors too much I think. This guy is Sofia's brother, Francis' son. Nicholas Cage's cousin. He mostly does hand-held super 8 camera stuff while hanging around with other famous hipsters. This film is a Danger:Diabolik throwback type thing with Jeremy Davies, Jason Schwartzman (another cousin), Gerard Depardieu etc. It looks interesting, it'll probably be the most hipsterish thing I'll have ever seen. It's about £3.50 on Amazon on import so I may well tell you what it was like in a couple of weeks. I love the poster too.

2. The Keep (Michael Mann 1983)

It's Michael Mann, come on. This apparently isn't all that, and there's a version arriving on DVD sometime soon in Ingerlund, but it's Michael Mann people - MICHAEL MANN. Yes. Jurgen Prochnow and Gabriel Byrne? Yes. Ian McKellen before he was a gay wizard? Yes. It looks well weird.

3. Kicking & Screaming (Noah Baumbach 1995)

This isn't the Will Ferrell film, although I haven't seen that either. Noah Baumbach is the guy who wrote and directed 'The Squid and the Whale' and more recently 'Margot at the Wedding' with professional 'almost human' Nicole Kidman. He also co-wrote 'Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou' with Wes Anderson - which is probably going to be the thing on his CV most people might have seen. The two he's directed aren't a million miles away from Anderson in style but in content the situation is a lot more uncomfortable and slightly closer to reality. Squid and the Whale is tale of a married couple breaking up mostly from the point of view of their two sons. The kids handle it pretty badly, and their attitudes toward their parents take a bit of a battering. It's brilliant. This looks like more hipster fodder really, but I like his other stuff so it's on the list.

4. Static (Mark Romanek 1986)

Another music video director. Sorry. He started out as a photographer this one (most of them do I think), and did stuff like 'Closer' for Nine Inch Nails and 'Devil's Haircut' for Beck and the 'Hurt' video for Johnny Cash. He's pretty good. His only other feature that I know of is the Robin Williams photograph thriller 'One Hour Photo'. This one was made yonks ago and is about some guy who works in the bible belt and thinks he's invented a way to look into heaven - but when other people look they only see static. It sounds odd, and with plenty of opportunity for visual tomfoolery. It likely had a budget of about 50 bucks but should be worth a look I imagine.

5. Oleanna (David Mamet 1994)

This is going be a play in front of a camera basically, there's going to be pretty much nothing cinematic about it, but it's David Mamet, so the writing is going to be awesome. There's like, 3 characters in this I think...and it has William H Macy in a role I think he originated in the stage version. I'm a big fan of Glengarry Glen Ross, which again is the play on a screen format - albeit with a bigger and starrier cast, and Mamet always gives good talky. These things are kinda hard to write because I haven't seen the films. It has a college tutor/professor having some kind of sexual harassment tiff. It looks good.

6. Sorcerer: Wages Of Fear (William Friedkin 1977)

I just realised that this and 'The Keep' both have Tangerine Dream soundtracks. Ha. This summer I went to one of those Summerset House open air screenings, they were showing 'Pan's Labyrinth' and 'The Exorcist'. It went on till about a quarter past two and i think I was the only person there who stayed awake for both films. It was fucking freezing too. I'd seen #Pan's Labyrinth' relatively recently anyway but hadn't seen 'The Exorcist' for years. I was a bit surprised at how well it had aged. I'm not really talking about the special effects but the shot composition, camera movements, editing, foley, all that felt massively effective and contemporary. I've always liked 'The French Connection' too, and this has Roy Scheider from that, plus driving - good combination. That screening kinda kicked me into looking up Friedkin's stuff a bit more. I'm sure David N has covered this film at some point too...maybe on one of his vintage trailer blogs.

7. Pennies From Heaven (Herbert Ross 1981)

Steve Martin was my favourite film star when I was a kid. The Jerk, Three Amigos, Roxanne, All Of Me...I loved all that stuff. I remember seeing the Bob Hoskins 'Pennies from Heaven' years ago, and liking it, but it's all a bit foggy. Dennis Potter stuff is always a bit crackers, and this just seems like an odd fit to me. Martin with Bernadette Peters and Christopher Walken just sounds like fun to me, and I have a strange soft spot for some musicals - I really liked 'Romance & Cigarettes' a couple of years ago - and seeing a more youthful Walken in a musical has got to be good, hasn't it?

8. Resurrected (Paul Greengrass 1989)

I can't even find a poster for this one. Or a trailer. I could've put a picture of Greengrass or David Thewlis up but meh. I have a curiosity for debut features, and debut albums - stuff like that. I read somewhere once that it's the most honest or untainted a creative type will be before they have to start reproducing success and compromising. This may or may not be true but I'm definitely curious about how Greengrass got started, and how he developed into the film-maker he is now. United 93 was awesome and draining, and Bourne is, well, Bourne. Chuck in David Thewlis as a disgruntled soldier returning from the Faulklands, and it's probably going to be good right? Surely.

Ok that's it. I had nine but I'm only doing eight, I like the number better. It feels a bit too hipsterish this list, but what can I do? Nuffin. I'm gonna go buy CQ now. Maybe a couple of others too.

4/8 4/10

2008-08-05T20:35:00.003Z

17.58. They lead me into a room out back, barely lit by a single bulb. On a table in front of me is a pistol, behind the table a man, a boy, and a dog are blindfolded. I'm told I need to shoot one of them or we can't close the store, and I can't go home. I pick up the pistol.

06.58. I'm early. I'm not supposed to be here for another half an hour, but I wasn't sure exactly how long it would take to get here and I didn't want to be late. Turns out I can do it in less than an hour. I send a txt to my new manager letting him know I'm here already.

07.29. I get a txt back from my manager, he gives me directions to go around the back of the shopping centre, in order to get into the shop. He makes me a coffee, then gives me keys to the safe. He doesn't mention what I'm supposed to do with them.

08.25. Other members of staff turn up, most walk past without saying anything, most don't even make eye contact. Maybe they think I'm trying to sell them the Big Issue. I walk around the shop floor to familiarize myself with the layout. I notice what looks like a trap door behind the tills. The lights hum constantly.

09.47. The DVD supervisor didn't get any of my jokes. She's finnish or something. She smiles and nods a lot but there's clearly no comprehension. I'll talk slower next time. I talk to the guy who will soon be the only member of staff working on cds. I call him the 'future king of cds' and he gives me the same smile people give to pensioners when they say 'whipper snapper' - like I'm soft in the head. This is going well.

11.00. I've been in the office/cash office for ages. The manager is telling me all abut the different spreadsheets and budgets and 'bips' and stock predictors I've now got to worry about. I can't help thinking about the time when I was 14 and couldn't remember how to tie shoelaces for two hours. It feels like I don't even work for the same company anymore. I know no-one here, and have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, and have no idea about the new stuff I'm supposed to be learning. Plus, it's all my fault.

13.00. I get to go for lunch. I wander around the town centre. McDonalds. Burger King. KFC. Pret. Boots. Greggs. The usual. I wander past a TK Maxx, then wander back and buy some cheap trainers I don't need, then I find I little cafe place called Pumpernickels which does good sandwiches and has an outside bit to sit at. This is the highlight of the day so far.

14.00. The shop floor is the messiest thing I've ever seen. Trashed. I tidy up for a bit. It's not helping.

15.14. I'm doing some tills out of boredom. I can't find anything. Customers keep telling me to have a nice day, it's freaking me out.

15.17. I'm bored with tills. I leave.

15.35. I'm wandering around the fabled 'tiny backroom areas', which are about as large as anything from my last shop, one room of which is much bigger. There's random piles of stock everywhere that makes no sense. If there's a bit of wall, there's stuff piled up against it. This is now my problem. I hear a buzzing sound. There it goes again. It's the back door. It's a firedoor where the deliveries come in. I open it. There's a guy in a uniform with shorts, he has boxes for me. I have to count them.

15.55. I've managed to count to four and signed his little electronic tablet thing. It didn't look like my signature, more like scratches cats make on walls. He tells me his name is Bill 'in case I need it'. I have no idea why I might need it. I'm full of new information I have no current use for. Feels great.

16.25. I've been here since 7.30 - why am I still here? The manager is giving me his talk about how 'he's a machine', and how he works all the time but if I need to get out early (like on time, or only half an hour late) it can be arranged. I'm also told that I won't be able to have Saturday off to go to the music festival I wanted to go to, and have a ticket for, as he is off Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday for a wedding. Longest wedding ever. I'm working Sunday as well. My head starts to hurt. Tomorrow is my day off.

17.05. I'm tidying up again. Boring. I go in the stockroom and ask about a story I heard. Apparently he drew a really good, detailed drawing of a penis on a sheet of A4, with the intention of showing it to people when they were on the phone - to make them laugh etc. A part-timer thought this was very funny - and put the drawing inside a Wii box his friend was coming in to buy. His friend bought the Wii, then gave it straight to his mum - who gave it straight to her four year old daughter for her birthday. Whoopsie. It's like indirectly abusing a child. Terrible. We bond slightly over the hilarity. I talk him into buying the Wire also.

17.45. I'm being told how to shut the shop down, set the alarm etc. I'm writing it all down or I will almost certainly forget it all. It seems simple enough. Turns out the safe keys are for opening the safe and putting the tills in there. Mystery solved.

18.05. We're outside. The shop is shut. I can go home. Me, the manager and two others all walk to the tube station in silence. I go and get on my train. The ride to Finchley Road is 35 minutes, and I spend most of it going over the days events. I wonder why I voluntarily left a place of work where I knew everyone, liked a few of them, had a reasonably easy job I was comfortable in, for this. I can't remember why I thought this was a good idea, and I hope I don't wake up Wednesday morning feeling sick because I have to go to work. I also wonder why they made me kill people to go home, but then I spent most of the day being told things, and doing things I didn't really understand - so I'd better get used to it.

I Have A Competition In Me, I Want No-One Else To Succeed.

2008-05-13T21:08:00.003Z

I won a thing. Last Thursday. I won a thing with some other guys by being marginally superior to some still other guys at a thing. None of those things matter apart from the fact that I won a thing. I'm a winner. I beat some guys, by being better than them, and proved that fact by winning. I'm a winner. Sometimes.

This is the thing I won. A pewter tankard. It's engraved with stuff. I won it. Other people were denied it because I was better than them. Yeah.

Who knew the names of all the Ghostbusters? I did. Who delved into his massive brain and obtained the knowledge that in fact it is Beetlejuice who specialises in exorcisms of the living. Eddie Marsan plays the driving instructor in Happy-Go-Lucky. I knew that. I somehow knew that Catherine Zeta Jones' character in Chicago was called Velma, and I haven't even seen the film.

I was a sub as well, a last minute replacement for someone else - not even the first choice replacement. A 'Nani' to the guy on a late shift's 'Ronaldo'. Sure I had nerves, I was unsure about the quality and depth of my geek knowledge, but the free beer and wine soon settled any butterflies and I was away. Telling people Ricky Hatton fought at Cesar's Palace (wrong) and that Sally Hawkins was in Topsy-Turvey (also wrong) with nary a care or reasonable excuse for why I thought these things were anything less than untruths. I was in a zone.

I was a bit competitive. Luckily the other people on the team were competitive to a level I have rarely seen - they made me look nonplussed for the victory. I get a bit competitive now and again. I can't play computer games on my lunch anymore because if I lose I find it incredibly hard to hide the crushing disappointment and foul mood I invariably put myself in. I have effectively ruined the rest of my day by losing, and I get angry at myself because of it. I don't get the same thing when I play football, maybe because I know that I'm such an incidental part of the team the eventual outcome isn't really down to any contribution I made.

Normally I'm the worst loser I know - in the sense of when I lose something, I take it badly, hide it badly - not so much in the general 'loser in life' type of thing. I'm pretty bad in that area too but by no means the worst I know - I just won a tankard after all. I think I get it from my Mum. There was a pub quiz we used to frequent in the dark days up north which was run by the boyfriend of one of the barmaids. At the end of the evening at which point the parent was suitably sauced she would comment at volume about how the 'fucking bar-team have done really fucking well and they're all thick as shit'. Even if we beat them.

I don't remember being this competitive as a kid, it was maybe something that kicked in when I was at college I think. I was the kid that could draw stuff at school, then when I got to college I was one kid among many who could draw stuff. I was no longer special. I had nothing left going for me. No fair. It now means that winning a tin pot sends me over the edge with triumphant ecstasy. It's a very nice tin pot though, go look at the photo again, look at how it gleams.

It's got me thinking about pub quizzes and how with the breadth of knowledge on tap in my place of work, we could clean up. In this bustling metropolis there must be tons of the things going on every night, with a carefully selected team we could be raking in cash money, splitting the profits and dancing off into the night with pewter tankards spilling out of every orifice. It's a golden plan with one flaw. I probably wouldn't make the team. I'm too much of an all rounder - a little bit of knowledge all over the place - not geeky enough in any particular field to be an essential part of a winning squad. Any question I answered last Thursday could have been answered by at least four or five other people in my shop, and there were other questions I didn't answer that they probably could. This would do my competitive streak no good at all, I would have to deal with being the weak link on an otherwise strong team. I would become resentful and feelings of inadequacy would ruin any fleeting triumphs the team would have.

Maybe.

More likely I would get more drunk than the others and have fun. Happy just to be a winner by association. Happy with my shiny tankard.

I am available for quizzes and any chances at fleeting glory. Winning is not guaranteed.

Evil Feeds On Human Eyes.

2008-04-27T20:38:00.002Z

You people who get told about the pen blog, then go read it, then openly laugh at me in pubs and at work about it, you're gonna love this one.

I had a go on Wii Fit at my friends house today. It's quite fun, they make strange little games for you to do on the balance board not unlike the games on Brain Training on the DS, and the principle is much the same. You play the thing every day and you improve yourself - only whereas with the Brain Training it's stuff like maths and spelling, in this case it's aerobics and balance games. Yoga is involved but we didn't have a go at that bit. As I mentioned earlier it's fun - but most of the fun is had in watching your friends contorting their faces and bodies in a strained attempt to play the game.

Watching my mate struggling through a marathon six minutes of hula-hooping, his face red, gasping for breath, crotch gyrating in a less than rhythmic motion, tongue lolling, the occasional involuntary grunt, is one of the funniest things I've seen in weeks. His girlfriend thought so too.

We did jogging. Virtual jogging.

You don't even use the board for this. You get the Wii remote and put it in your pocket, then as you run on the spot it works out how quick you're supposed to be going, like a pedometer works. They live in a third floor flat, so they have downstairs neighbors. They made me run on a rug because I was making too much noise running on the floorboards. They had to muffle my huge mass bouncing up and down because they were worried that I would disturb people on a different floor. During the actual rug-running post parts of my body jiggled around nearly uncontrollably, and in a manner I wasn't used to. Unpleasant. I was feeling self-conscious before then anyway.

When you first put the machine on, you make a profile to track your progress - you tell it your age and height, then get on the board and it weighs you and works out how good your posture is, centre of gravity and stuff. It even asks you how heavy the clothes you are wearing are - I messed this bit up and told it they weighed nothing, which meant I told the Wii that I was naked. After this it asks if you want the male or female virtual personal trainer, ever the naked gentleman I picked the lady. Then it gives you your 'Wii Fit age'. After it had predictably told me I was obese (I knew this already - the man-boobs and bingo-wings gave it away), it then said my Wii Fit age was 27. My actual age is 27. All I can put this down to is that I can stand up straight good. Real good. That or the female virtual personal trainer was impressed by my lack of inhibitions while exercising, and fiddled the results for me.

As far as real exercise goes I walk around a bit at work, don't do anywhere near as much lifting and carrying as I used to, and I try and play football for an hour a week. The football is currently knocked on the head because I didn't make it there last week, and I have to book it in a six week block, and yadda yadda. At the turn of the year I had good intentions of doing more exercise, going for real life jogs and stuff. I live quite near a good sized park - so there isn't an excuse for not doing it, I find it very difficult to drag myself out of bed before I'm required to for work. I don't want to join a gym, the idea of lots of people being around to watch the blubber fly isn't high up on my list of fantasies.

I find it a bit strange that I don't feel this self-conscious at football. There I'm wheezing around the place in shorts and knee high socks, getting nut-megged and generally limping through 60 minutes of trying not to fuck-up more than a handful of times. I played the best I maybe ever have there a couple of weeks ago, I could tell this because I only gave away the ball needlessly twice. I did let in a soft goal but everyone is shit in goal - it doesn't count.

Maybe it's because it's a bit more manly a pursuit. A proper sport. And I enjoy it. The running around just isn't as enjoyable - plus I look like Victoria Wood back when she had a man's haircut.

I'm fully aware this is a problem there are easy answers to. Eat better food. Go running anyway. Sort out midweek football. Get a corset. Stop whinging. I know. Who wants to hear a fat bloke complaining about being fat? I don't think I'll be investing in Wii Fit, I don't think my bedroom floor could take all the stationary jogging.

Make With The Funny. NOW. FUCKING NOW.

2008-02-18T19:33:00.004Z

I haven't got a lot of stress in my life. If I do my job wrong nobody dies, nobody gets hurt. I earn just about enough to cover the bills and have a reasonably fun time the rest of the time - drinking and watching films mainly. There's a mortgage, but that pretty much takes care of itself...and is around the same amount of cash as my rent was anywho. I don't have a wife or children to look after, no creditors kicking down my door, no drug habit, no serious illness.

I've got it pretty easy.

There is one thing though, which I'm beginning to see in the same light as the pen thing and the counting thing. A compulsion, an old habit that I don't have any control over anymore. It's the self applied pressure to make with the funny.

I went out for my birthday a couple of weeks ago, nothing flash...just to a pub near work for some drinking. I managed to forget my house keys on the morning of the night out, and ended up locked out for two days. I've tried blogging about it three times and just can't seem to manage to do the situation justice. It's a classic set-up for an episode of a sit-com or something - but the reality of it was so bland I just couldn't extract enough funny from it to make it worth reading about. It feels like a wasted opportunity.

On the dreaded Facebook there is a feature where you update your 'status'. Which basically means at the top of your profile page it'll say 'Davey Blackett...' then you can write whatever you like after it. Previously it was restricted to 'Davey Blackett is...' but now it's a free-for-all. On the homepage there is a section down the right which shows your friends recently updated status, so it's like a little bit of free advertising for your funny status update. Obviously I'm now addicted to updating my 'status' pretty much everyday, trying desperately to out-funny myself at every turn. For what? A reaction? Will people think better of me if my status update is mildy amusing? More likely they'll think I'm a bit weird for updating it so often and for trying so hard - and believe me, some of them are hard work. Don't worry, I'm not going to share the highlights.

I'm not funny most of the time. I have moments now and again, mostly unintentional, but a lot of the time I'm just cracking wise - going for sarcasm or something inane or wacky.

I think it's definitely a social thing, it's how I fit in. A guy at work marvels at how quickly I managed to make friends when I started, and such a wide range too. He reckons it's down to me being able to find some sort of middle ground with anyone I meet, some subject or film or musician that I know a sliver enough about to fool them into thinking I'm like them. I think that it's because I'll joke along with them. They'll make some kind of sarky observation and I'll join in - ellaborate on their original gripe and digress. Or just say something even more sarky.

I'm a horrible sycophant on first impression, and this is often enough to win people over. I've kind of knocked that on the head in the last 6 months or so, or at least tried to. I think I'm a bit less bothered about getting along with people. But this is digressing.

At school I was a fat brainy kid, which isn't the recipe for popularity, so I went out of my way to have the best put-downs - to be the most adept in any slanging match, to reduce the audience to titters and my opponent to a humiliated shell of shame and humouristic impotence. This carried on through College, to the point of me becoming cruel for the sake of it. I toned it down at that point, I was getting too angry with it, the defence mechanism I used to ingratiate myself with people was starting to alienate them. Not good. This is turning into a history of me trying to be funny. Not good. Not the point.

This blog is another good example. I haven't done a post in weeks from some kind of comedy block. I started one in late December about my favourite music of last year, but I really hate writing about music, and it wasn't funny, so I scrapped it as worthless. I have the drafts for the 'Birthday post', which are rubbish also. Not funny. Scrapped. I'm not brilliant at being informative, I don't have the depth of knowledge or insight to write something really informative and interesting. I'm very much on the self-deprication gravy train with this thing, which is fine, but limiting.

It just feels strange to be suddenly aware of how much I go out of my way to make with the funny, how I'll stretch a reply to a text message to two texts just to fit the whole joke in. If I reply to an email without putting some vague attempt at humour in it I feel like I've been a bit arsey with them, that I don't give a shit enough about them to make the effort. Like there's something wrong with just a polite and friendly reply, there has to be a kicker. At least the fact that I don't write 'lol' is a small mercy I guess.

The best thing about this is that people won't even realise I try so hard, they won't think of me as a 'funny guy'. I'm not a performer - I don't do voices (I have one blanket accent for everyone foreign, which sounds like no-one foreign), I made snide comments. Want to see the funniest thing I've done in months? Here.

I've resorted to pulling faces again. I've still got it.

Bobby Dazzler.

2008-01-06T21:08:00.000Z

When I was 7 years old I lived in Ouston, a couple of miles from Chester-le-Street, very close to Gateshead. I had lived there at 31 Byron Close from the ages of two months. I had learned to ride my bike in the surrounding fields, been hung upside down by the ankles by my brother in the bedrooms, had loved and lost our pet dog Mitzie (corgi). It was there I first discovered the wonder and terror of thousands and thousands of tiny red baby spiders erupting from a whole in our garden wall. It was the place I first became a Beaver, eager to gain badges in art and drawing, then losing interest. I remember the night a drunk driver knocked down a streetlight right in front of our house, and all the wires and sparks you would imagine flailing from the splintered base were present and correct. My dad had a stereo and headphones I wasn't allowed to touch, because it was set up exactly how he liked it. I played Atari in my brothers bedroom with my sister and my Nana. We had swing ball in the back garden.

My Mum and Dad got divorced when I was 7, and I was largely oblivious to the occasion. Dad worked away from home most of the time anyway, returning one weekend in two - so the transition of this to the fortnightly Dad visit of the separated parents made absolutely no difference to me, the only change being we went out and did stuff. I was taken to the swimming baths, or to the cinema, I remember seeing Short Circuit 2 at this juncture, it's effect on me was profound and I draw nothing but robots on tracks with goggly eyes for months.

This separation also meant the house we lived in was to be sold and me and my Mum moved to Peterlee, a couple of miles from Easington Colliery - the location of my Mum's Mum, my Nana. We were given a council house to rent in Peterlee, and on arrival discovered the front door had been stolen, surely by some master criminal with a plan in mind - in which our front door would play some vital part. Sure enough two days later, and about a day and a half after a new front door had been attached, we received a visit from a local cad and bounder offering to sell our front door back to us for a bargain knock down price. Clearly the acquisition of the new front door had rendered the need for the old one redundant, so this liberator of thresholds was instructed to fuck off. It was still a nice welcome to the neighbourhood.

55 Fairbairn Road was our new address. Semi-detached council houses, with front and back gardens, two bedrooms, central heating, windows, and a new Garfield frieze in my room, to soften the blow of moving to such a despairing and desolate armpit of a place. A wide variety of miscreants, thieves, dole scum, serial breeders, and gypos were our neighbours.

One of these characters I befriended almost immediately was Michael Garside (I think...the names are hazy). He lived next door, was the same age as me, and also had brown hair - the similarities ended there. He was educated to a lower degree, swore more, washed less, made a wide variety of weapons using pieces of wood, rusty nails, and many many multi-coloured elastic bands. Crossbows were his favourite. I saw him try to eat a battery once. He liked to break toys, or take them without permission then claim them as his own. I remember wondering why the carpets in his house seemed to be drenched in sand.

We went fishing once off Hartlepool pier with his Dad, I had never been fishing before so the whole thing was a complete mystery to me, I didn't know what to expect. What I should have expected was sitting on some cold stone steps with numb fingers, in the freezing rain, wondering why in the hell I was there for 3 hours. I haven't been fishing since, it just hasn't appealed.

Michael didn't go to the same school as me - I was due to start at Acre Rigg, abut half a mile walk away, he was at Eden Hill - an obviously much lower rent facility, although closer. This meant our brief friendship was short lived, partly due to us both making new friends at our new schools, partly just because we were so different.

Around this time we acquired a cat, or kitten. My sister paid for him, my Mum named him, but I picked him. Named Monty for Uncle Monty from Withnail & I (which I was oblivious of at the time), he was a tabby cat with delusions of prowess. He fancied himself a lover, a fighter, an acrobat, a climber, an assassin, a rumour, a fleeting shadow on the edge of vision. A legend.

He was in fact uncoordinated, stroppy, and easily fooled. Scratch the inside of a cardboard box, and he would peer at the outside in wonder - mystified at the cause of the rustling. We once saw him try to mount the next door neighbours cat in a bid to spread his seed. I of course was mostly innocent to his intent, but my Mum was creased with laughter at his attempts. Apparently he was doing it wrong, frantically shagging away at his girlfriends shoulder blades like there was no tomorrow. Bless him for trying though.

My Mum took an interest in cat behavior and bought a book to read through, periodically bestowing pertinent information on the symptoms and causes of his seemingly random actions. Cats don't like it if you stare at them, it's like you're challenging them. If you look then look away, and blink slowly, they take this to mean you're no threat and at ease with them, so more likely to come and attempt to sit on you. This of course backfires on people who hate or fear cats...and don't want to look at them. Averting their attention so fiercely only makes them all the more appealing for the poor cat to make friends with.

One of these pieces of information was that cats use their whiskers to determine whether or not they can fit through gaps. So in my tiny dense head this meant that if my cat had no whiskers it would result in all kinds of hilarious situations with his head stuck in between fence posts, iron railings, letterboxes, stuff like that. So I cut off some of his whiskers with my safety scissors. This is the single most shameful act of my life so far. I still have nightmares about it now and again. No hilarious situations ensued, there was no hilarity, just guilt, and wary looks from the cat for the next few months - looks of betrayal and confusion. It was horrible.

Karma took care of me though, on my way to school a few weeks later I fell over and got a piece of broken bottle stuck in the palm of my right hand the size of a surfboard. Blood gushing, me weak with loss of bodily fluids and the white hot pain surging and pulsing through my chubby little grab hook, I soldiered on the school. The wound was quickly dressed and sprayed with some yellow substance which stung like the shame of my cat mutilation. I was bandaged and sent on my way. I still have a little 'z' shaped scar on my hand from it. Never hurt the cat again.

I had that cat up to about a month after I moved to London, when he died at my Mum's house in a nicer part of Peterlee. He is now in an urn in her kitchen, above the cupboard for plates.

Cineworld Pass Did Me No Harm.

2008-01-01T22:57:00.000Z

I saw some films this year, some of which I liked, some I disliked, some I really liked...like these.

10. Michael Clayton.
George Clooney seems to be skirting some kind of knife edge, on one side he's a smarmy in-crowd loving political jet-setter. Then now and again he pops up in quality stuff like Michael Clayton. Written by the guy who 'adapts' Bourne, and you can tell...the script feels streamlined and functional while also being completely engrossing and filled with believable characters.

The look of the movie is as cold and removed as the players, and for a writer Gilroy shows an unexpectedly refined eye, a nice surprise in a film which I found myself enjoying much more than I anticipated. It's a film with the minimum of action or set pieces and it's a credit to the makers - and Clooney - that they got a film like this made, whereas a few years ago it would have a had a few more explosions thrown in and very likely Harrison Ford in it doing an awful lot more running.

It's a cool calm and intelligent film, with some very smooth tricks up it's sleeve.

9. La Science des reves (The Science Of Sleep).
This was maybe the film I was looking forward to the most this year, and although I enjoyed it - it was probably also the most disappointing. I was expecting a lot, as Michel Gondry's previous film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is one of my favourites. I have come to realise that Eternal Sunshine was a rare marriage of a director receiving a script tailor made to his talents - and that lightening is unlikely to strike twice.

Working from his own script has made for a flabbier and more confused product, but the flashes of inspiration and the sheer originality of the approach still keeps this film in my top ten. I like the daft stuff, I can get around the annoying main character and wallow in the creative juices of Gondry's mind. It's at times light-hearted and then nightmarish, jumping between dream sequences and reality at a rate of knots, till both you and Bernal have become confused as to which is which. I can forgive it it's short-comings and love it for the slightly disfigured child that it is.

8. This Is England.

Shane Meadows has been steadily advancing on making himself a masterful film that will thrust him front and centre in British film-making. This is very likely the film. It's going to be top of lots of peoples lists for this year - greeted with shouts of 'film of the year' back when it was released in the first half of the year. It is very good, with exceptional performances and Meadows' great eye for framing. There is no bum note throughout, and as much as this is a complete and accessible product - it is only the directors experience on films like Dead Man's Shoes and 24/7 - both of which are favourites of mine - which have made it possible.

I want to say it reminds me in places of Scorsese, and even in a couple of shots Wes Anderson - but all of this is infused with the time and place of it's setting, which gives it it's charm, while young Thomas Turgoose gives it it's heart. Impressive and touching and powerful.

It would be higher if Paddy Considine was in it.

7. Two Days In Paris.

This reminded me of Annie Hall more than anything else, which is one of my favourite films. Obviously slightly more contemporary setting, but the study of a relationship - and the pitfalls within one - is achingly constant whatever the time period. Episodic with deftly handled comedy mixed in amongst the relationship angst, and presenting a Paris for once without landmarks, seen from the eyes of a resident and native rather than a tourist - which is a nice change.

The two leads are both excellent I think, and Delpy is all the more impressive with the knowledge that she wrote and directed the film at the same time. I can't imagine directing her own parents (playing her characters parents) would have been the easiest job in the world, but their eccentric bickering and capers make the film for me. Lovely.

6. 300.

My favourite trailer of 2006. I never read the Frank Miller original but have been assured the film is an improvement. It looks amazing, like nothing else...a distinct step up from Sin City's clumsy use of the green screen, more adapted than directly translated. Hammier than spiderpig, more naked manflesh than a straight man should reasonably be exposed to, slow-mo up to the eyeballs, and one of the worst voice-overs I've heard in ages. It's still awesome. I love it despite of and because of it's faults, it makes it more fun - like it's the new Harryhausen style or something.

Watchmen is going to be so pants though. Seriously.

5. 28 Weeks Later.

Think of 28 Days Later as Alien. Slower, more deliberate, more suspense, more downtime...setting an aesthetic...starting a story. A British director creating an original film with an original style. Then the uppity foreigner with big ideas comes along. He brings in the Americans, he brings in the Army, he ups the action, he ups the splatter and the explosions...he definitely ups the body count. So this is Aliens kinda.

It has people with rabies getting chopped up with helicopter blades. Come on.

4. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.

I love Chopper. Dominik's second film is as impressive as his first. For me the best ensemble cast of the year, with old favourites (Sam Rockwell, Zooey Deschanel) and a remarkable performance from Casey Affleck - well and truly out of his slab faced older brother's shadow. Nick Cave's score is excellent, the film is frequently visually stunning, as assured and measured a film as any veteran directors could produce today.

Soaked in atmosphere, time, and place, this is a film to be immersed in...to savour...and to admire.

3. The Fountain.

I still think this is to be applauded as much for what it tries for as what it achieves. I found it engrossing, inventive, and ambitious...at times stunningly beautiful, melodramatic, and even cringe worthy...it has managed to stay in my head for what is now coming up to a year since I saw it. There are films on this list - and indeed that didn't even make the list - that deserve to be higher, but I was in just the right place in the cinema, and Aronofsky managed to actually drag my head out of the cinema...I was utterly, utterly engrossed. It was kinda magical, and this is my list anyway - so if you hated it, don't put it on your list.

2. The Bourne Ultimatum.

Have you seen the first two? This one is as good, if not better. That is all.

Ok that's not all...there's a bit in Waterloo Station - the geography is perfect - Bourne is the calm head in the middle of chaos around him - he takes apart grab teams and it's one of the most exciting things I've seen on screen for years. I'm a London resident, so now walking through Waterloo Station requires some of the Bourne soundtrack on my Ipod or it's been a wasted journey. This film makes you want to hit people with hardback books and drive cars backwards off the top storeys of car parks. I get giddy just thinking about watching it. Awesome. Awesome.

1. Zodiac.

Everyone loves All the Presidents Men, almost as much as they love Paul Newman and Germans losing. I used to be a bit obsessed with it when I lived in Gateshead, I would watch it maybe twice a week for a while. It was about the same time I got into West Wing and reading true crime books...I think I was developing a taste for more investigative/procedural fare. This reminds me of that time - but to a higher standard.

Ruffalo and Downey Jr. are excellent - even young Jake manages to stay the right side of impressive. I liked Fincher anyway, but now it's like he's reigned in his own ego - sacrificing it to tell a story in the best possible manner, and I can't imagine anyone doing it better. Subtly stylish without being showy, intensely dramatic without relying on action or explosions. Repeat viewings yield rich rewards - you notice the Hitchcock style score, the magnificent setting shots, and the excellent rhythms in the endless conversations and discussions which make up the movie.

Why is it No.1? A combination of me enjoying it a whole lot, and it obviously deserving to be.

I AM NOT AVERY.

The Cornelius Solution.

2007-12-09T17:21:00.000Z

'I didn't end up in a ditch. I just fell asleep on the bus for a bit. I ended up in Kensington. I got home about half three, maybe four. I got taxis. I'm fine.'

This is what I should have printed on a t-shirt this week. It would have been easier than saying it over and over again. It was the Christmas party on Monday evening. I was drunk. I didn't hit anyone, or grope anything. I can remember most of it. The next morning was spent in blissful ignorance of the fact that I forgot to set my alarm, and at 12.45 I woke up wondering why it was so light outside. Then I panicked slightly. I was supposed to be at work at 8.30. Over four hours late. Oh dear.

I hear that people were worried about me. They thought I might be dead somewhere, slumped behind some bins, mugged and murdered. Strangely enough no-one called me to check though. So I slept.

My neck hurt a bit for a couple of days because of my dancing style. Style might be the wrong word. I throw my head about like I'm trying to shake baby spiders out from behind my eyes, whilst jumping. It's very sexy. I think I'm going to volunteer to DJ next year, in a bid to stay the right side of paralytic. Futile, I know.

Luckily my manager laughed at me down the phone when I called into work. My day off was switched to that day, and all I had to worry about was the ribbing to follow when I eventually did manage to drag my sorry self to work. I am somewhat of a laughing stock to the people there who didn't already know what I am like. To the rest it was no real surprise.

I had another party to go to last night. It was the Birthday party of the friend whose Birthday party I went mental at last year and punched a fella. To make up for this I bought her a pony from John Lewis.

The party was fancy dress, the theme of which was 'Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves'. I didn't want to dress up as a gypsy. Tramp is too easy for me. Thief it was. Out came the black and white stripey t-shirt, black mask, fingerless gloves, and potato gun. It did cross my mind to go for something a bit cleverer, like go as a celebrity and call it identity theft - or as a politician or something, but then the evening would be spent explaining myself to furrowed brows. Not worth it. So I was one of many stripey people in masks. There was a tramp fight, but it was very short and not really that violent. Was fun, but being tired all the time makes me considerably less fun at parties.

People who have never met me before talk louder to me than to other people because they think I'm a bit slow. I listen to them talk about Ibiza until it's safe to wander off without seeming rude. Which seems like a really really long time sometimes.

I start night-shifts on Thursday. I'm slightly dreading it. I would like it to be like the Henry Winkler/Michael Keaton film of the same name, but it's very unlikely. I do get to be music nazi though, I'm the only one allowed to change the cd. If I feel like it I can inflict Mogwai on them all night. At 3am every morning I could make them listen to Sonic Youth for no good reason. 5am? Time for the Mars Volta live album. On repeat.

It does mean that is unlikely to be anymore drink related mishaps this side of Xmas, as I'll be starting work at 10pm most nights. Joy. I'll save money too in theory. Bonus.

There was supposed to be more t-shirts going on the shop tonight but the website in being bobbins so that will be tomorrow now. After I go see the car crash that will be Southland Tales. Saw Beowulf in 3D this week, most fun I've had in ages. Saw The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford also, which was really well acted and fucking beautiful in places, I thought. Looking forward to There Will Be Blood. Not going to see Golden Compass. No way Jose.

In other news, Ricky Hatton cost me a tenner, the ginger prick.

If so, could you sharpen the blades on my lawnmower? Thankyou.

2007-11-08T20:45:00.000Z

It took me 3 and a half hours today to realise that the reason my finger was hurting was because there was a tiny cut on the knuckle. I don't know why a minuscule cut was aching so much, or even how it got there. I also don't know why I had a headache for around 15 hours earlier this week.

I think the most likely explanation is bloggers guilt. From not blogging. I don't think I should even refer to myself as a blogger anymore, I'm more of a tourist...less inclined to share my adventures and opinions over the electronic super highways. But here goes anyway.

I have a friend Simon who lives quite near me just off the Finchley Road. I know him back from when I lived and worked in Newcastle, he worked at the same bar as my then flatmate Dan (he does the horse blog over on the right). We are good friends anyhow, I painted his guitar one time and I also did some painting of him as Elvis Presley standing on the Shields Road - which is a road in Newcastle for you London types. We share an appreciation of Ween and Queens of the Stone Age, stuff like that. He has a beautiful new son and wife, plus a job. He's doing pretty well.

His wife is a Japanese journalist, she does articles for Japanese language publications over here - for the Japanese people who live here I imagine. She brought her cat Nikon over here with her so does a column on London form the pov of her cat...it's quite popular I hear. She also does interviews with young-ish singles blokes living in London...to er...get an idea of the European city lifestyle.

I was asked to be interviewed.

I said OK.

I was also told that previous interviewees had received emails from Japanese females living in London who wanted to meet them and that. I was OK with this.

So one day off we met up in a coffee shop and I got grilled. It's only when you're asked what you do in your spare time that you realise that it all sounds a bit sad and samey. I go to the cinema, I go to pubs, I like music and films, am I standing out from a crowd of other Londoners yet? I play football once a week if I make it there, I have a blog, I play guitar sporadically, I go to art galleries less often than I'd like to.

What are my top 3 favourite films? Er...

*I don't have time to seriously think about all the films I've ever seen...I've got to try and present some kind of cross-section of taste rather than just reel off the one's I sit and watch the most often. I don't really want to share that my copy of 'Stripes' is nearly worn out. Can't really pick ones that everybody recognises as some of the best films ever...that would be a bit predictable. I should have at least one foreign one in there, otherwise I'll seem like some northern slob who can't deal with subtitles...er...er...*

'City of Lost Children?'

*OK one down, now to show I am actually interested in films I should pick and old one...make like I have done some research into the medium - not a Hitchcock, that would be too easy - maybe a western? Oh I know.*

'Night of the Hunter.'

*OK now something a bit modern, a bit hipster, maybe a Wes Anderson film, Spike Jonze, Coen Brothers? Ah of course. Gondry. I can prattle on about the little french prats stuff for ages. Perfect.*

'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'

She thought Eternal Sunshine was shot too dark, it all looks too miserable, remembered that City of Lost Children was very green, and hadn't heard of Night of the Hunter at all. This was fair enough, I'd just spent a frenzied minute inside my own head trying to pick out stuff to make me look cool, looking obscure and a bit weird was a safer bet for the final outcome. They're not even my favourite films. The real list would be longer, with more violence and Lindsay Lohan. It worried me a bit that I managed to choose two 'children in peril' films. Meh.

I managed to bang on about music videos and a couple of books and stuff like that for a while, then came the question. The question.

'What kind of girls do you like?'

Well. What do you do here? Do you go for absolute truth, and risk coming across as some kind of hyper-picky sociopath, or do you play down the looks angle and harp on about the importance of personality? Something in between? It's difficult. Do I pick a celebrity and approximate my preferences in a partner by the airbrushed lines of some girl I've never met but seen on telly and in magazines? It's probably safest.

Being on the wrong side of conventionally attractive myself I am fully aware of the laughable nature of saying I really like girls who look like Natalie Portman while I myself look like Chris Moyles. As much as I'd like to get with Mary Elizabeth Winstead she is unlikely to have a hankering for a young John Candy. Although John Candy did get to mud-wrestle a gaggle of ladies in Stripes. He knew what he was doing.

In the end I spent some time saying how I like intelligent girls, ones who can crack jokes, into similar things...arty types...but not too arty...laid back. This is all true, but it was still hard to say 'No six foot gingers please' for risk of offending anyone who may be reading it. It was strange.

I should have had the balls to just do the cupped hands in front of my own chest thing accompanied by the narrowing of the eyes on the nodding head. That's my type, or at least part of it. I also like girls who don't look worried when I smile at them. It's good if they can understand my accent, or it isn't...depending on what I've just said. If they like to go to the aquarium that's a big plus. That's maybe it. I'm not the choosiest.

Or.

'Er...brunettes I guess.'

-

The Teeth Hurt shop is up and running. I've sold...like 3 or something. I'm looking into buying some advertising on Facebook as the world and his wife is on there. There's still not that much in the way of varied products on there, but time permitting I should have a couple of new shirts on there before the evening is out. So check it out, like tomorrow or some time.

I might be done tweaking the look of the site for now, or maybe not. I change my mind about it pretty much daily. I need to make some better banners too. Make a myspace for it too and start befriending the world and as many bands as possible. It's looking time consuming.

-

I get to be plain clothed at work from now on. Some of you will know what that means and some won't. It's just in time for Christmas, so it'll be the same fun and games in a new costume. My Mum is very proud. Not as proud as the time I hit a guy though.

I have purchased a stylophone. Music industry beware.

The Lights Were A-Flashing.

2007-09-16T14:20:00.000Z

Hello.

I went to see Two Days In Paris recently. I really liked it, reminded me of Annie Hall in lots of ways, with it's little episodes feeling like extended snapshots - but squashed down into two days...rather than Halls sprawl of years. It was funnier too. Thumbs up.

It also reminded be me of a girl I went out with when I lived in Newcastle years ago. I don't think there was a specific event or character in the film that triggered the memory, but anyway, she's on my mind now. Probably because I made a pigs ear of things and I feel the GUILT.

She approached me one day with the idea of taking a break for a couple of months so she could concentrate on her studies - she was coming up to the end of her course, and me taking up too much of her time meant she was stressing about getting all her work done. I didn't really like the idea, but could kinda appreciate that she wanted to do well so begrudgingly agreed.

Ok I put up a bit of a fight, I didn't want to be messed around...I wanted to make sure she was sure she wanted the break...I was basically taking it as being temporarily dumped. I didn't like it. So I said that if she was completely sure and wanted no contact for two months then we would do that...but if she broke the deal then we would be splitting up permanently.

See...I just wrote that and it seems really fucking stupid. But it seemed perfectly reasonable about...er...5 years ago? I'm pretty sure I'm a moron.

So about a week into this split she phones me up and we I go off on one and we split up. She cries. A lot. I stick to my guns and feel like I've done the right thing, that I'm not taking any shit...not being messed around. My friends back me up - reassure me that I've done what people should do in that situation, tell me it was a good decision. Course they do, they're my friends.

Retrospect can be a shitter. There's few things I'm as angry about as this event in my personal history. Sabotaging myself seems like too weak a term. I let the pride-bashing 'break' thing lead me to stupid ultimatums that I stupidly stuck to like an infant with the best toy at playtime. GAH.

I was told the other day that 'all men are arseholes' and I countered with 'all women are fucking mental'. Both statements appear to be correct as far as I can tell.

Ok. It's off my chest now. So go see Two Days in Paris, it's ace. Julie Delpy is the new Parisian Woody Allen. Ace I tells ya.

BOOM.

Look. It's an actual t-shirt. A Teeth Hurt. Ready for collection.

I have a new computer. I'm only now really getting to grips with it. It's brilliant. I press the buttons and things happen instantly. I open programs and they work with a couple of seconds...I don't have to go off and do something for a few minutes while itunes boots. Incredible. This coupled with the desk I hauled home from Ikea on two buses means I have a nice little place to do stuff. Like draw, and futz about on photoshop. It's a new era of productivity.

It has a fingerprint reader I'm NEVER going to use. Awesome. It looks slightly girly but I don't give a shit.

This took ages.

I remember stuff and I've got a gun.

2007-08-24T23:33:00.000Z

I need to cut back on the socialising. I'm getting nothing done. I don't mean that I'm out every night getting merry or worse, just that I'm busy. But I'm not busy. I need a time machine perhaps.

There's projects, and things for friends I should be working on, they should be monopolising my time. They aren't. It was my day off yesterday and I spent a big chunk of it around a friends house playing 'Guitar Hero'. It was fun, it's an addictive and enjoyable computer game. But that was my day off gone pretty much. I'd done nothing useful. This makes me feel bad. In between and during work hours I've regained that post-Christmas lethargy, the dreaded lack of motivation. I got rid of it for a while.

I went through a period not that long ago of writing a lot. This doesn't happen to me often. I managed to design a few t-shirts...and now the one I am trying to make for a buddy has turned into the biggest and most involved project I've done since I was in education. I should have been able to put it together fairly quickly - the brief was exact and clear, but I'm somehow managing to drag it out ridiculously. Sorry dude, it'll be done soon. Really. I feel bad.

I spend too much time perusing the Internet. I have facebook and myspace profiles. They somehow demand attention from me. I've managed to get visiting myspace down to a once a week thing at least, but the facebook is consistently daily. I get emails from it telling me people have done something on my wall or invited me to join something. So I go on it and futz about for three-quarters of an hour doing NOTHING USEFUL. It's crossed my mind more than once to just delete them. Leave the people I might actually want to hear from my email and get the hell out. It's getting very close.

A weekend off is a monthly occurrence where I work, not a weekly pleasure like in other more civilized jobs. They are there to be treasured and to make the most of. I usually sleep into the afternoon on both days and get drunk with people one night. That'd be about it. I get 12 of these mini holidays a year and I fritter them away like this.

I don't deserve them.

I'm getting bank holiday Monday off, and Tuesday as my day off next week. I'm not drinking. I'm setting an alarm clock. I'm gonna get some shit done.

1. Gonna buy (and likely have to build) a desk for my room.

This shit of trying to use the kitchen table or do shit off my knee while sitting on my bed has lost the nugget of simple charm it once had. It's a fucking pain, and it is going to stop. I own (part of) the place now, I'm getting a fucking workstation.

2. Monsterwork (and maybe Ross) is getting a t-shirt made.

This is happening. I need to move on. I'm losing faith in previous t-shirt manufacture techniques for this one, the most ambitious project I have attempted - so if it means sending the design to someone else to print up, so be it. I've been stringing the poor guy along for too long now, and as I mentioned earlier - I officially 'feel bad'. This should really be no.1 in front of the desk, this is bank holiday priority. As Ross' brief was to print out a picture for him and...just put it on a t-shirt...that might happen too.

3. Gonna paint some shit.

I'm a bit rubbish at painting, but I like it. When I was in Newcastle, I did a little bit of it and was getting quite into it for a while. I've been getting lots of pangs lately to try it again. I do portraits. It's fun. It's relatively relaxing. They look nice on the wall...better than my photos anyway. Oh yeah...

4. Snap some shit.

I've gone all lax with the photography thing. I have a flickr page I haven't updated in er...I don't even know. Since the Cuban party thing. I've taken a few photos but nothing I really feel the need to share with the world. From now on the camera stays with me, and while out and about...I snap shit.

5. 5?

Whoah. You've only got two days chump, don't go nuts. You don't need a number five. Just get those four done and we'll go from there. These are like mini New Year resolutions with a short time span, easy to handle chunks. You can do it. Small steps. This isn't about ignoring your friends, or turning into a tee-total hermit. But you need to get productive. More so than you are now at least.

I agree.

Luckily on Bank Holiday Monday most of my friends will be at the Notting Hill Carnival. I don't like it there, it's too crowded and loud and messy. I'm glad to stay away. I'm gonna go and see Knocked up tomorrow after work, so that won't get in the way either. I've left myself no excuses. I feel good about this. It's going to happen.

In other news...

Yeah like I said my house is (partly) mine. It's done. I have mortgage. Wahay. I'm a grown up.

Not freaked out by it at all, or feeling the need to wear sensible slacks or cardigans. I still have all my own teeth.

I saw Bourne. What else did you want to know? Do you want me to pretend I didn't like it? String you along for a while? Complain about the shaky camera and how old and fat everyone in it looked? I can't do it. I won't do it. If anyone I know hasn't seen it, or somehow hasn't seen the preceding two films...well I don't think I really want to know you anymore.

I want to go wander around Waterloo station with the soundtrack on my ipod. It's like that.

There's nothing else interesting happening. Unless......no. That's it.

I should have done something useful other than this, is what I just realised. Bah.

Look at what they make you give.

Family Values.

2007-07-18T23:54:00.000Z

The scariest film I've ever seen is Return to Oz. The thing freaked me out for years. Its a kids film with a mental hospital, electric shock therapy, screaming creatures with wheels instead of hands and feet, with wires all over them. There's a princess with a hallway full of severed heads that she can swap with her own. There's a pumpkinhead dude. It's a lot worse than some pale Japanese kid with black eyes. A lot.

But it's a film for children. I first saw it as a child. It's Disney. I might as well be scared of Dumbo.

I've got a bit of a thing for kids films, and kids books. Before someone else says it I will...I don't want to grow up. I still read Rebecca's World by Terry Nation once a year, just because I loved it so much as a child, yet I remember the illustrations and the characters freaking me out a bit. I had bad dreams. Roald Dahl was less of a problem in this respect but still just as loved. Maybe Quentin Blake's pen scratchings weren't intimidating enough for me, they never really looked like real people.

I found a collection of Roald Dahl short stories in Oxfam a couple of years ago, in it was included the first thing he got published, and a story about a boy being bullied. He is picked on one day by the school meat-head and his chum, who have just acquired an air-rifle. With it they threaten the boy, before shooting and killing a swan. They rip the swan apart and tether the swans bloody wings to the boy before forcing him at gunpoint to climb a tree and jump out of it. It's pretty grim stuff, and benefits from not having some spindly pointy faced kids grinning with sharpened teeth on the cover, dressed in pastels. He had a disturbing imagination, and would put his protagonists in such dire and horrendous situations that you can't help but root for them. The parents are usually dead, highly abusive, or incredibly poor. Luckily there is always a small unexpected chance of a silver lining in the distance, a chance for escape...a better life. The hardships suffered make the success at the end all the more euphoric, and it's a formula pretty much every children's writer - or indeed maker of a children's film I know of will follow.

The new Harry Potter book was out last week. I really wished that I wasn't going to read it, but I have. I've read the others, and I wish I hadn't. They aren't good - that's a given. Collectively you're all now disappointed with me and shaking your heads in disgust, I know. I have no excuse, the closest I can get to describing the situation is being addicted something really mundane, like looking at bricks...or organising socks. Guilty pleasure used to come into it early on...but not any more. It was borne of curiosity, boredom even, and an obvious lack of judgement - and has become a monkey on my shoulder, fucking me in the ear. I'm disappointed with myself.

Rowling can't write. She's better than Dan Brown, but it's like saying death by drowning is better than death by burning. It's not pleasant, it just hurts less. She has managed to slightly buck a trend by giving her main character the obligatory shitstorm of dead parents, crappy Auntie and Uncle, and facial disfigurement - but has made him totally unlikable to boot. He gets more and more annoying as the story progresses. It's remarkable. She blows all the 'silver lining' stuff almost instantly, by the third chapter he can do magic, it turns out he's rich, and he's off to the most exclusive boarding school in the country, where he's already the most famous and popular student. What is left for him to achieve exactly? Apart from revenge? That's all the Potter books have turned out to be, in the end, a wait for the boy to get old enough to avenge his parents. Like Batman's boarding school years.

Potter's deal is he basically can't stay out of trouble, he just goes around sticking his nose in and escapes by the skin of his teeth every time. He's just edging closer and closer to the day he can do a murder and be called a hero for it. It's predictable, and simplistic. It's also really really popular.

People do love the characters. They turned up to buy the book dressed as them. They have Harry Potter tattoos. They make their own wands. Two different people I know have knitted me Harry Potter scarves, because they know I read the books. I watch the films. They're nice scarves. But why did I get sucked in with everyone else? Why don't I know better? I avoided The DaVinci Code, I could happily never watch an episode of Big Brother. I watched two episodes of Lost and got bored. I can't figure out why this particular brand of brain popcorn has me so hooked.

I'm a sucker, is pretty much all I can think of. I'm a sucker for escapism. It's probably why I'm so keen on Gondry's dreamworlds, Gilliam and Jeunet. The things that happen in these worlds aren't real, and never will be - but for a while you can immerse yourself into them and forget about your day to day troubles completely. Fantastical things can happen and unique and detailed places are created. City of Lost Children is one of my favourite films, and when I was younger I thought the Adventures of Baron Munchausen was the most amazing things I'd ever seen. It's possible to get that feeling of wonder and complete immersion back by re-watching, but re-reading works a lot better. Re-triggering imaginings I first entered into years previously, nothing becomes shabby due to advances in special effects or inaccuracy of composition.

I don't re-watch Return to Oz because the images and characters in my head are still vivid, still unique and frightening. I can re-read Rebacca's World and imagine it more grandiose and amazing than any film-maker could ever conceive. Rowling's world is one behind the scenes of our own, and it is a fun place to escape to once every few years, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Might as well face it, you're addicted to hugs.

2007-07-01T14:49:00.000Z

Are you ready? I'm ready. I think we're ready. I think as a species we're ready. Let's stop talking.

Things would be better. Really.

Imagine if we all took a vow of silence, or had our tongues cut out or something...and none of this Stephen Hawking 'a computer with a voice' shit either. All or nothing, we can do the 'writing things down to each other' thing, or the talented can get by without it. Improve your body language, more expressive and clarified facial expressions. Wink more. Thousand yards stares. Threatening grunts. Grunts are allowed.

I'm tired of talking to people I don't want to talk to. They ask me for things, contradict themselves, make jokes that aren't funny. I'm sick of it. Strangers come up to me and tell me which is the best series of Poirot. They tell me how expensive things are in Norway. Today I learnt that some old weird dude has a friend in New York that sends him things in white envelopes. He was so busy using his words he didn't notice me dying inside, my face showed it. My face shows lots of things. I'm sure I've mentioned before how I can be told to shut up/fuck off/not start before I've even opened my mouth, as the facial expressions are natural and instinctive it's a little unsettling. Most of the time they're on the money...I was indeed about to say something sarcastic, or insulting, but still...it's a bit like having your thoughts telegraphed on your mush. Sometimes my face doesn't even move and they still know...which make sit more like telepathy. Creepy.

In these instances I have no use for words, I've done all that's needed, whatever they've imagined I was going to say has likely had the desired affect. It could be an evolutionary leap, like the day some kid wakes up with extra thumbs or that vital second penis. The tongue will one day be reduced to moving food around your mouth and other bedroom activities, no longer needed for endless pontification and mangling of syllables.

I like the idea of having headphones on all the time, so I can listen to whatever music I like...or nothing. The rest of the time I'm deaf. People would just have to write down what they want on my little pad, then fuck off.

This theory obviously has major drawbacks, like all music would now be instrumental, all films with no dialogue, and the no talking thing would mean no chit-chat with your friends. The opportunity to show off your quickfire wit would rely on how quickly and legibly you can scribble the improvised genius down. Imagine trying to chat up a girl with post-it notes. Actually that last one doesn't sound too bad. They'd likely have pre-prepared 'I've got a boyfriend' post-its. Or t-shirts. Ok it's a bad idea, I know.

I just want a quiet life. Bah.

I went to see some Shakespeare on Thursday. The Merry Wives of Windsor, not one of the more popular productions. It was at the Brockley Jack in er...Brockley. It was put on by some adult acting course students, mainly seeming like a bunch of enthusiastic amateurs. One guy delivered all his lines with his eyes shut for the first ten minutes.

I got the feeling the casting on student stuff goes on rotation more than anything else, as some of the more impressive actors were in minor roles, and a couple of the leads were struggling at times. The Chinese guy playing one of the Wives was a highlight, complete with excessive giggles and strong Chinese accent, he would have been chewing scenery if there was a set.

I had fun, the enthusiasm was infectious, and they did well to choose a little known comedy rather than a play the audience would have seen many times, and done many times better. Some terrible singing though, terrible. Bloody Shakespeare, he didn't have much of an ear for a tune, dude invented what? 40%? I think 40% of the words we use today. That sounds like a lot, but I can't be bothered to wikipedia it, like wikipedia is accurate.

Anyway a good share of the language is his fault, it's down to him that the great unwashed can meander into my place of work and throw a huge variety of ill thought out musings at me, complete with frilly words. I'm going to stop whinging in a minute.

So if you're in the Brockley neck of the woods, it's £7 in, and you get to see some proper culture. Or there's a place up the road with a pool table.

Maybe I could just pretend to be deaf for a day. Knowing my luck some smart bastard would start using sign language at me and I'd be instantly rumbled. They probably don't take kindly to other people pretending, the deaf. They'd see it more as a spoof than a homage I think. Plus they have sticks. No they don't...that's the other ones. Gypsies.

Late addition: I scored a goal at football last night. I might just paint my boots gold because I'm so fucking amazing.

Bluebeard.

2007-06-17T23:09:00.000Z

First things first, I've picked a winner for the t-shirt company name thing...whatsit...competition.

The winner is... TEETH HURT.

But as the quality of entries was so high, and the number of entrants so few...everyone who entered can have a t-shirt. 'Wow that's really generous of you, thanks Davey!'

No problem.

There was a lot of name suggestions I really liked, and it was indeed a difficult choice to make. As some of them may end up as t-shirts themselves (I Say Thee No) or sub-departments of the Teeth Hurt brand (I'm thinking T-Shizzles for the more hip-hop stylin shirts), I figure you all deserve something for your hard efforts.

The drill is you can either leave your t-shirt requests in the comments bit, or email me what it is you want immortalized over your tits on cloth. Anything you like, but if you make me draw someone I don't like, say...Orlando Bloom...the drawing may be a bit sarcastic. You've been warned. If any of you actually request a t-shirt with Orlando Bloom on I'll assume you have balls like Gene Hackman and we'll say no more about it.

Oh yeah...congratulations to Ross. It was him that picked it. Yay for Ross.

I've done a logo type thing for it but as I am still scannerless you'll have to wait a little to see it. Sorry.

I had a weeks holiday from work. I went home. It was foggy.

Everyone I know from there seems to have paired off remarkably. They're all in long term relationships or engaged...which I guess is nearly the same thing. One of my mates has been going out with his girlfriend since we were all at school together, for something like 12 years. I mentioned that most of my friends in London were single or in relatively short term relationships, with only a couple of exceptions...she said it was probably better like that. Grass is always greener huh?

I saw a lad, a definite 'lad', pour the contents of an ashtray into a half-pint glass of lager...then down it. A friend from school was showing everyone his recently waxed chest and stomach. The 'lad' wanted to have a drinking race with me...in which he would not use his hands. I asked why? He said 'because I can...and I'm mint'.

At the height of my drinking/behaving like an idiot over the years I'm pretty safe in the knowledge I wasn't that guy. Why drink the contents of an ashtray? What kind of badge of honor was it for him? What a tit.

I rented Stranger Than Fiction with my mum's blockbuster card when I was home as well, which freaked me out a little bit. Will Ferrell's character in it counts stuff. Regular readers of this blog will know that I also count stuff. Newbies can go read 'One...Ha ha ha' over there in the archives on the right. It's all there. It turns out also that both my mum and my late nan used to count stuff. Fucking thing is genetic. I was cursed with it before I even knew it. Watch me beat the girls off with a stick when I inherit my father's glasses and bald patch.

OK, this was only a quickie...but I'm going to try and be a bit more regular with this thing. And I need to get to bed. I'm tired all the time. Plus I went to footie fro the first time in two weeks...and it feels like I have temporary asthma again. Yay.

Take Me Someplace Nice.

2007-05-24T22:39:00.000Z

It's too hot in my house. It's stuffy and uncomfortable, so I go outside.

I sit down on the dodgy wicker garden furniture and stretch out. It's about 21.10 and it still isn't really dark yet. I can see a half moon and lots and lots of sky. The house is two storeys off the ground, above a shop, but we have a small patio that goes from the front door around to outside the kitchen window, an old radiator and the aforementioned garden furniture reside here.

I make myself comfortable and put my feet up on the rail that skirts the edge of the roof right down to the stairs leading down to the first front door. The sky is already a deep dark blue in the heavens, getting gradually lighter as it follows down to the horizon, until just above the tree tops it turns a muddy brown. This being London there are frequent aircraft crossing the sky, too high up to be making any noise, and it's getting too dark to see anything but their little flashing lights. As I'm staring upwards three solitary stars become visible just to the right of the moon, and they're in a triangle formation. I move my head slightly to the left and just past the edge of next doors wall is another star so bright it makes the three I just found look like dull pennies.

I spend some time trying to work out if that way is north, if it's the north star. I work out I'm facing something like west north west, so it may well be.

The streetlight below me is making the back street glow orange, while everything above that point it turning every shade of blue. I've had headphones in listening to 'An Ending (Ascent)' on repeat for the last thirty-five minutes but it feels like five.

I start to toy with the idea of sleeping here tonight, not looking forward to returning to the house, with the windows that won't open far enough to move the stale, hot air. The only problems could be if it turns cold, or wet, and the two-seater chair I've crammed myself into is unlikely to be the most comfortable of beds.

I abandon the idea for now, and click back on the ipod again. I fix my eyes on a planes lights passing by and make it seem like the aircraft is fixed and everything else is sliding past it. Out of the corner of my left eye the moon drops away while the neighbours wall is pulled towards the blinking lights.

I decide against fetching my camera to try and take a photograph as I know the photograph won't match it. Not even close. Plus the last thing I want to do is move. I start to think I should make this a regular thing, weather permitting. Just sit around outside for a while each night, but I probably won't remember to, or I'll be out doing something, or next time it won't be as good. I put this out of my mind, there's no reason it should be any different.

I can't really remember the last time I saw stars in the sky. It must have been on a trip home, but I don't notice them there, they're not as out of the ordinary. I can remember midnight strolls where I saw hundreds of them, and didn't appreciate it. How do you appreciate stars anyway, buy them a really nice telescope? I dunno.

It's 22.05 now and it's pretty dark. My muddy horizon is all but gone, so the deep dark sky and the amber streets are separated just by the black treeline in the back gardens of my neighbours.

Each time I press back on the ipod is like hitting snooze on my alarm clock, it buys me another four and a bit minutes of this, and puts off everything else. I can't bring myself to scroll through to find a different song to soundtrack the evening, this ones working too well.

I start thinking I should go and write the blog about my new Cineworld pass, about how I'll probably end up watching all sorts of crap I wouldn't normally entertain just to get my moneys worth. I'll write about how there might be a few nice surprises along the way, I'll share my limited thoughts about 28 Weeks Later, This Is England and Zodiac. I'll put up the photo I took of my pass with the unflattering photo. I'm staring at a particularly slow moving plane and doing the slidey-moon and wall thing again.

It's 22.45, and if I stay out here any longer I'm going to fall asleep.

Competition Time!

2007-05-10T22:00:00.000Z

Win! Win! Win!

I need a name for any prospective t-shirt business I hope to start. I'm having trouble thinking of one. This is where you come in.

I want suggestions for a name for my t-shirt enterprise, I'll take ideas from anybody, anywhere, anyhow, and you can make as many attempts as you like...if your suggestion is picked, I'll make you a t-shirt of your very own.

The prize will be a one-off and you can even make a request for what goes on it...anything you like. It will be the only one in the world and you'll look amazing in it. I can post the thing to you or we can arrange a drop off at a disused factory...or maybe a busy public place, whatever you usually do.

You can leave your attempts as comments here, or email me, or myspace me, or if you're very clever, telepathy. If you know me you can tell me in person but get me to write it down or I will very likely forget it.

If by some horrible turn of events you win and don't like the t-shirt I make you then...well...tough shit. It's a free t-shirt, wear it for decorating or something.

I will close the competition in one month, unless a suitable name has not been found, then you might get an extension. That or I just call it 'Davey's T-shirts' or something...but I'd rather not do that so get your thinking caps on.

Good luck.

Blood Is Not Enough.

2007-05-07T22:55:00.000Z

I was going to do a post about something, like I'd had an idea and wanted to talk about it. Then I wrote it down and it didn't read so good, plus I didn't really have a point...and plus I got bored and confused halfway through reading it back, so you guys would have had no chance.

It was something about characters in films and books and stuff, the unlikable ones, the annoying ones...who you root for despite their flaws.

I think.

It was dull. I banged on for a bit about the book of Children of Men, then about how I used to hate Woody Allen films, then some other stuff. I went and fetched pictures for it and everything, so I've left them in and deleted the rest. Maybe they'll add spooky resonance to the guff I'm replacing the 'proper' blog with. Unlikely but y'know...pictures are nice.

So anyway.

One of the problems with London is how everything is so spread out, so inevitably most of the people you know live miles and miles away, making social gatherings a carefully planned operation. I have friends in Camberwell, Ealing, Barnes, pretty much anywhere but North London - where I am.
Sitting alone in my newspaper lined room. Posters out of the Guardian and photos of Easington beach staring at me as I sit around watching Spongebob Squarepants and reading trivia sections in imdb.

Yesterday I couldn't get on the Internet, I felt spookily alone.

I have flatmates, the people I'm allegedly buying a flat with, but we don't share many of the same interests. They like to watch Columbo and American Idol on a projector in the front room. Sometimes they break out Charlies Angels. I've sat and watched one film with them in the whole time I've lived here...the Joan Collins classic 'The Stud'. We have different tastes.

I'm not saying I don't like them, they're nice people...but they don't fulfill my friendship needs.

My friendship needs are about to be slightly better fed.

One of my friends is about to move onto Holloway Road, just around the corner of one of my other friends. I can get there in about 20 minutes. We're already talking about starting a bowling team and getting matching tattoos. We don't have to plan a week in advance and pick a place in town everyone knows to meet up and have a drink. In London terms, we might as well be on the same street.

I have friends at work I can randomly go for a drink with, but it's not really the same thing. It's the friends and colleagues line in the sand. There are plenty of people in the place I'd count as friends, and will gladly spend time with outside work...but there's only a couple I would actually meet up with outside of work, on a day off or something. The rest of the time it's mostly just convenient for both parties, if they wanna go see a film or try to kill themselves with alcohol, and want company while they do it.

I feel like I'm selling my work friends short, I don't intend to, but outside of work friends are essential too. Having people reasonably close just makes me feel a bit more at home in this sprawling metropolis, I've a local little crew, like up north, and I've missed not having one. I'd almost forgotten what it was like.
Me and these friends of mine were at a Cuban themed birthday party on Saturday. It was fun. I wore a Cuban hat, aviators, and a red t-shirt. I looked mucho Cuban. It helped that on the t-shirt I drew a Che Guevara type chap and on the back wrote 'Communism. It totally works.', just so people wouldn't be unsure of my Cuban credentials.

The t-shirt went down well, so well in fact that I had requests for me to sell t-shirts to people, and ended up handing out my myspace address to strangers demanding I draw something on cloth for them. If they actually bother to get in touch or not is something different...but who knows. Speaking of the dreaded myspace I got a message from a journalist wanting me to contribute t-shirts to put on her website, which I think will probably end up as her trying to sell me advertising space, but you never know...I'll see what comes of it.

I've got pictures of the Che Davey shirt, I'll post them up when I get them sorted. I've set up another blog-thingy for the purposes of arty-pants, and a link will appear shortly over there on the right. A couple of you detectives have already found it, but don't get excited, the rest of you haven't been missing much. I need a scanner, and maybe to be more productive would help also.

My lack of impressive qualifications means I'm either going to have to get all keen at work or do something off my own back to better my situation, this is starting to sink deeper and deeper in. hopefully it will motivate me.

I signed up for google analytics but I'm not getting many exotic hits on this thing, one from Brasilia, a couple from Yankeeland...
...a Dublin and a Montreal. Apart from these it's all bog standard British crap. I've considered manufacturing a perfect lowest common denominator blog, with lots of pornstars and just lists and lists of celebrities with the word 'naked' splattered randomly throughout. Sounds too much like selling out though. I did have a hit from someone searching for 'gravity locks of wheelie bin', so that was exciting. Maybe the sensible blog I tried to write would have helped me out, got me some fleeting attention from Japan or Moscow or Copenhagen or something. Why doesn't the world want to hear about my escapades? The fools.

Night of the Hunter. Robert Mitchum. I got asked about my favourite films by a stranger the other day. I named three and I had to explain to him what two of them were as he'd never heard of them, it was depressing. He started by trying to guess them by looking at me, so he took a look then started barking 'Casino! Casino! Casino!' at me. Fuckwit. I couldn't even take any pleasure in telling him about the films I do like. He looked at me like I was being wilfully obscure. I tried to tell him about City of Lost Children and saw I'd lost him by mentioning a film without guns in it. Bah.

I get far too excited at work when people ask about a particular film or director I like, that I can enthuse about. They inevitably think I do this same excited performance for whatever people ask for, like an estate agent trying to sell a shitty flat, I'll say anything to get the sale. If only they could see my apathy with every other customer of the day maybe they'd appreciate it more. Maybe I shouldn't give a monkeys.

I'm going to go and listen to the three tracks of Era Vulgaris (new Queens of the Stone Age album) I've managed to err....'acquire'. I'm all smiley when they play Sick Sick Sick at work. One month, can't wait.

Ok bye.

Visions of Madness

2007-04-26T22:15:00.000Z

I'm sociable.

I went out on Tuesday night after work, at short notice, to a pub I hadn't been to before in Camden. The Hawley Arms it was called. Apparently 'Kirsten Dunst' and 'Razorlight Twat' had been there the night before, and had gotten publicly shit-faced. I was unaware of this but it was likely the reason my friends had chosen it.

I saw professional putty face 'Kelly Osbourne' and high ranked amateur comedy musician 'The Drummer from the Darkness' there. It was amazing how the bar staffs faces lit up at the sight of Osbourne spawn.

The place seemed like an alright pub but way too trendy for the likes of me. I don't do drugs and I don't wear pointy shoes in the style of Lloyd Grossman by Vic Reeves. My trousers aren't skinny and where I come from if you wear a collarless shirt and braces you're going to a costume party as your Grandad. Nice roof terrace though.

I imagine if you have a large enough supply of coke you could have a production line of fashionistas willing to blow you in the toilets for the whole night. That's the impression I got.

While we were sitting on the roof terrace a couple of young gentlemen took the bench beside us, they looked vaguely familiar but I haven't a clue if they were in a band or had just once bought a DVD from me. Maybe they just looked like everyone else in the place. Shortly after they had sat down a girl approached them. She was drunk. She was on coke. She was called Madeline.

She sat down in front of them and proceeded to ramble absolute shite at them. They didn't know her, they looked like they were in a band, she wanted to know them. There was lots of arm waving and noise making that wasn't even words, and despite initial attempts to ignore the mad bitch she quickly became the focus of everyone's attention. It was impossible to carry on a conversation within ten yards of her, she was too loud, too imposing...and held your attention like only the worst natural disasters can. My friend Barry got called 'A fucking Shaggy Scooby Doo looking motherfucker'. I was 'Davey....he's crazy...Davey is crazy...so crazy...in a mazey...a crazy mazey...but Davey...you're free from the mazey...', while she swirled her arms in the air. Then she started doing the 'we're not worthy' from Wayne's World thing while chanting 'YOU ROCK!!!' at me.

I hadn't moved a muscle.

I was too scared.

Barry wanted to take her home, such was her entertainment value, but sadly she escaped into the night. The last we saw of her was some skinhead chap trying to pull her, good luck to him I say.

We then went to a different pub which is apparently on the same road that Amy Winehouse lives on. My idea to go knocking on front doors till we found her fell on stony ears. I can't remember what the pub was called, but the barman inside was eyeing me up with far too much enthusiasm, then did a weird 'hiding the pints' game when pouring the drinks I'd ordered. This consisted of bringing two pints over, going 'two pints yeah?', me going 'no, four', then him grinning and bringing the other two pints over he'd already poured. This confused me.

Again, I was scared.

I got home around 2. I got up for work at 6.30. Not much sleep.

I'm very sociable.

Thursday night was a gig at Cargo that I'd agreed to a while ago. I quite like Cargo despite the fact it's a bit of a pain to get home from and like Camden seems to attract the dreaded alien trendies. I went to see Boom Bip. No I hadn't heard of him either, I've heard he has lots of fingers in lots of pies. He looks like this guy though.

This guy is Robert Grubb, an Australian actor. I wanted to find a picture of him in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, as 'pig killer'. This'll have to do. This is what American music guy Boom Bip looks like though. Seriously. Only in white jeans and a thin white jacket with glowing fluorescent tubes under his jacket, playing a tiny white electronic drum kit. I made a video. The guy closest to us isn't Boom Bip, he's one of his 'band'.

That's quite enough of that.

He looked a bit like Andrew McCarthy. He fucking loved his cowbell. He missed it a lot though. Now and again he would do a cowbell solo. I left a glass on the side of the stage and he took time time out from hitting the legs of his keyboard to hit my empty glass. Boom Bip had some two tone cowbell thingy and the other band member (like Money Mark but bigger and with long hair) had rice shakers like the ones we all made in school when we were nippers.

That ten second video tells you everything you really need to know about Boom Bip. I was expecting something more hip hop related, but lots of electro was all I got. At one point they involved some of 'Drive' by the Cars. So there was a tune for a coulple of minutes. Jesus most of it was boring. The Money Mark looking guy had one of those guitar shaped keyboards that you haven't seen since 1987. It just made me want to play guitar hero.

Boom Bip were supported by two bands. The first were called 'The Wild Beasts'. Caroline said they sounded like Huckeberry Hound singing 'Lonely This Christmas', which is funnier than my description of them as Dame Edna fronting the Arctic Monkeys. They looked like this.

At some points they went a bit sea-shanty-ish and waltzy. It was nice enough. Their lead guitarist had a grey roll neck on and a strange pointy haircut, and looked like he didn't know what he was doing. The lead singer had a collarless shirt on and braces. He was probably at the same pub as me the night before. They made me think of the Ordinary Boys. Yeurgh.

The other support band were Half Cousin. They had a clarinet and an accordion. The clarinet player looked like Nathan Barley and also had a metal sheet he hit. They featured a ginger bass player who looked all madchester, and another braces and high-trousers chap on MOOG and keys and no-shoes or socks. He looked like the guy from Moloko/Mr Bean. They were good. Look at the magic of video.

The songs featuring the accordion were the best ones, and I was getting quite into it. There was kind of the happy mess thing I like so much about Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire going on. Recommended.

It was a couple of fun nights. I made up for it today by accidentally sleeping for 14 hours. Really. I'm in work at 8am tomorrow. If I get to sleep before 5am I'll be amazed. I've unfortunately rendered myself nocturnal.

I feel like I'm back at College.

You can't go home again.

2007-04-19T23:19:00.000Z

I could have chosen to blog about a film, or music, or one of my wacky drunken adventures. Instead I'm blogging about the approaching possibility that I'm growing up, slightly. This is happening because I'm in the process of securing a slight percentage of a mortgage.

I'm going to be a home-owner.

Ok, part home-owner.

There'll definitely be at least one window and maybe two-thirds of a door I could call my own.

Plus I'll be tied into this major financial investment with two people I've known for about 18 months. It's all very well planned and not at all on the spur of the moment. The story begins a few weeks ago, shhhh...let's go there now...

One of my flatmates only works weekends, he's in a band the rest of the time, they're signed but you won't have heard of them. This results in a great deal of free time for him during the week, he fills this time by going to the gym, working on his music, dancing and singing classes, and buying stuff. He bought some paint, and proceeded to start painting the flat.

It was just white, nothing outlandish. He's a bit new wave, owns white trousers, listens to lots of Bowie and Pet Shop Boys - so he likes white. This sort of activity in a house you're renting and don't own feels too much like doing the landlord a favour to me - and I warned him.

'You'll paint the whole place so it looks brand new, then the landlord will want to sell the place'.

We laughed it off, then the next day the landlord phoned and informed us that he wanted to sell the place.

Me and my big mouth.

So a plan was hatched, the decorator/flatmate was going to see if he could get a mortgage to buy the flat, and my good self and my other flatmate (bookseller/musician) would pay him the same rent we were paying now. This was 'Plan A'.

'Plan A' went tits up almost immediately when it transpired that he couldn't get anyone to give him a mortgage for the amount required (at the time we were looking at anything from 300k - 350k). So 'Plan B' was born.

'Plan B'.
All three of us go for a mortgage together, so our combined incomes - stop yawning you fuckers - would together dupe some bank into lending us sufficient funds to buy our three bedroomed flat/band rehearsal rooms situated above a lovely 'tanning centre'. If the 'tanning centre' isn't some kind of brothel or money laundering front then everything I've seen on ITV has been wrong.

This is the same flat where my key to get through the first front door hasn't worked for about a year. The one where I climb onto a wheelie bin then over a wall and drop down the other side. Every day. The wall I now and again fall off when drunk. I hate the wall but by god I now have the measure of it. I know it. It's mine.

The second front door works like a dream.

Anyway you're not going to get a full financial breakdown or the consequent ins and outs of what is happening - there's probably too much incriminating information on this thing already - but as I write the thing is going ahead. It looks like it's going to happen. I'm going to be on the property ladder.

This scares me more than I'd like to admit. For all the pros I can think of, my slacker side (he's quite strong, that side) insists on pointing out a con.

Pro - No more paying out rent to a fat cat landlord - from here on in it's all an investment.

Con - If you get sick of your job you can't just quit and go and stay at your mums, you have a mortgage to pay.

Pro - In a few years you could sell up and get a tidy sum back, to invest in another property or whatever.

Con - You now definitely can't decide to do a degree, work part-time or do something silly like start your own business, you need the guaranteed income.

Pro - You could move out if you want, and rent your room out - the rent would pay for the mortgage payments, and you're still on the ladder.

Con - You're buying part of a house and you don't get paid much and it's happening quick and a mortgage is basically a fuckload of debt and something is going to go wrong, I know it, I know it. Jesus.

Calm down.

I play football once a week and most days I dress like I wanted to when I was fifteen. I doodle robots and masked vigilantes, while watching movies with zombies, tanks, or tanks and zombies in them. I should be saving up for a PS3, instead I'm suddenly all interested in interest rates. Half a percent!?!? Brown you cunt.

I bought red trainers a few weeks ago. Homeowners don't wear red trainers, look at what happened to Dorothy's house...swept up in a tornado then used to kill an elderly lady by blunt force trauma. That can't have helped the re-sale value.

The majority of the people I've told about this react with a degree of shock, which is understandable. I'm not really in a position where I should be considering this, and as they are in similar positions it surprises them that it seems to be happening. I do have one friend on the property ladder, same age, we were on the same course in Newcastle - except she passed it well and went on to a degree course. She bought a flat in Angel with the help of her parents, which she currently rents out to a city type for 'a fortune' a month. I think in her case it was more of an idea from her parents to help her get on the property ladder as early as possible, and as they were in a position to help it made sense that they did. Parental instigation I imagine gives a sort of a comfort zone to the proceedings, after all surely they wouldn't be advising you to take a course of action that could prove to be catastrophic? Surely. They're looking out for your best interests, their most basic purpose after bringing you into the world is to look after you, so if they're involved/instigating the thing then you're going to feel better/safer about it.

That wasn't a thinly veiled cry for help from my own parents by the way, I'm either doing this off my own back or not at all. I doubt they'd be in a position to help anyway, but if they were they would. Maybe not, I don't call them very often really, and after I've visited I whinge about it. They only love me for the pub quiz.

The point is, maybe the lack of family involvement is a factor contributing to my sporadic 'freaking out' about the mortgage. I dunno, maybe it's all just a bit too grown up for me and I'm looking for excuses. It's a responsibility and I've had none for quite a long time, my last pet died just after I moved down here...and he was more my mum's anyway. My main contribution to his life was hanging him off the top of doors and taking birds eye photos of him so he looked like a cat Deckard hanging off the side of a building at the end of Bladerunner. Plus I named him.

I could put the photo of the urn containing his ashes at the end of this post, but that would be a bit MORBID. Instead I will vow to fix the first front door lock in honour of his memory, and hang off my wall now and again, in the style of Deckard. A man homaging Bladerunner in honour of his dead cat on the side of his house, what he owns part of. The wall. I'll pay for the wall.

As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a drawer.

2007-04-09T21:20:00.000Z

I was at the Science Museum a week or so ago, and in the gift shop they had a Russian Space Pen. It can write in zero gravity, upside down, in any temperature, it's a marvel.

It's a pencil.

They had those proper NASA space pens as well, those ones that can write on water and feed thousands on two fish and some baps. They were like £20 or something though, so freak that I am - I still wasn't tempted. Why would I be tempted at all you ask? Because I'm a bit strange about pens.

Look.

The NYPD pencil is actually from New York. Most of the ones in the cup on the left are from Muji, all the different colours of their fineliners. There's a sliding Pope pen from Rome (of which I have two, one for new Pope - one for old or 'classic' Pope), a giant pen which writes in four different colours (also from America, it looks kinda like a dildo and if you walk around with it in your trouser pocket you get attention - good and bad). There's an assortment of pencils and black pens there also, the tube thing is some recycled coloured pencils from the Science Museum visit. On the right is a cup full of origami fish. Origami is another post. Some badges in the front cup, ignore them.

This isn't all of them, this is just the stuff I use. Some are in a pencil case that I carry around with me like a stationary safety blanket. Some are scattered around drawers. I lose lots of them.

I might stop reading now if I were you, this isn't going to get much more interesting.

When I was a kid I was big into drawing, and colouring in and all that type of thing. There was a point in Junior school when me and my friends got into drawing Sonic the Hedgehog an awful lot. We found that if once we had drawn in pencil we drew over the original drawing in pen it would take on a magical almost professional quality. It made us feel good. We sought out the best pens for the job, like the Pilot fineliners you can still get today, nearly 20 years down the line (ha, a pun). I backtracked a little and found that the reams of Garfield drawings I'd done could be vastly improved by this very same technique. Then I moved onto drawing Robocop. Endlessly.

This makes it sound like we thought we'd invented inking - we didn't - but it was a kind of watershed moment concerning materials and techniques for my young brain. I learned quickly that the right pen could make or ruin a drawing, and that different pens could be employed for different effects. In the Colliery there wasn't really access to shops that supplied comics other than Beano, Dandy, and Viz - so I wasn't subject to the marvels of Batman or any of those guys. I was fumbling in the dark somewhat.

I can remember bugging my Mum for some pocket-money to buy a pen I'd seen in the local paper shop, and on receiving the blessed pound coin I promptly ran out in front of a car, such was my state of frenzied anticipation of the wonders this new pen would bestow upon me. I ran out in front of a car, because of a pen.

Because of a pen.

I didn't get hit, but I got a bit of a fright. Plus the pen I'd nearly died for wasn't all that in the end anyway. This may have been when I became aware I had a problem though. That's right, I knew before I wrote that paragraph below the photo.

As my School was a bit shit in the art department I didn't discover the joys if dip pens till I was doing Graphic Design at College. It was brilliant, I'd just read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas so I went all Ralph Steadman. My best piece of work I did at College was a letter bomb comic strip, all scratchy inks and splatters. I loved doing that.

The compulsion to find the right tools for the job has since carried through to adult life. I carry a selection of pens around with me at work, that I've been out and bought myself. Jesus it's sad. I have a Biro, a marker, a thin marker for label writing, and generally a coloured pen for writing on reports. I can't justify it, I have no reasonable excuse for this behavior.

Art and stationary shops hold a strange fascination for me, just the possibility that they may contain some small plastic stick that I haven't seen before - and may just be the sort of thing I'm looking for. It's almost never there, just the same rows upon rows of familiar faces. Been there, tried that one. I suppose it could be like a music enthusiast searching through old record shops for stuff he hasn't heard before, or that favourite record he just hasn't managed to find yet.

Only with pens.

The more I write the worse this is getting.

I'm not obsessively hunting through Graphics supplies shops for a 'nice pen' on my day off.

I'm not Pauline from League of Gentlemen either, all she had were Biro's, and I haven't taken

to wearing one around my neck. Yet.

It's a hangover from my youth, like everything else. I still draw, I still try to make the drawings look as good as possible, so they look finished - complete and respectable. So I'm on the look out for the tools that will help with that. That's all it is.

Does this even count as a 'thing'? This seems incidental to me, maybe a quirk, but not a character defect. I have no perspective here, is this better or worse then the counting thing? I have a few different packs of playing cards...is that a problem? I have an origami zoo. I should maybe stop while I'm ahead.

I went to IMAX last week to see 300 again. I hadn't been before so I thought 'what the hay'. I ended up sitting next to a guy stroking his nipples at the occasion of every naked male torso on the huge huge screen. He doubled the ferocity of the nipple friction at the sex scene.

Early on in the screening I instructed him to 'Stop fidgeting', which basically meant he stopped for a while then resumed the self abuse with a new technique, one which didn't involve his elbow rhythmically prodding me. I spent nearly the whole screening thinking of the best threat to use to get him to stop, or if the best idea would be to just go and get a member of staff and demand that he be ejected. He probably would have enjoyed the man-handling.

If I had a pen handy I probably would have threatened to stick it in his eye.

So they're multifunctional as well y'see.

ONE!! Ha Ha Ha. TWO!! Ha Ha Ha.

2007-04-01T21:48:00.000Z

No really, everythings fine.

Apparently I have tourettes, or autism, or something. Aspergers maybe? I count stuff and pull faces. Not always at the same time.

The face pulling things been going on for years, I can't even remember when it started but it's a characteristic I've become known for among friends and colleagues. It's a trait I would find annoying in others...most of the time I don't even realise I'm doing it.

I don't realise I'm counting things either until it's too late.

At work the other day someone was collecting up boxsets, with the intention of putting fresh clean stickers on them or something similar. They expressed a disbelief that they had found all of said boxsets.

Staffmember one - "How many are there?"

Staffmember two - "There's supposed to be eighty-something"

Staffmember one - "How many have you found?"

Idiot savant - "Well you've got eighty there"

See they had them piled up in stacks of ten, of which there were eight of...so eighty boxsets. This mental calculation opened a can of worms. See I'd already counted the boxsets before anyone asked how many there were, just cos they were there, and I count stuff.

While travelling on buses or in a car, I'll count windows on buildings, fence posts, streetlamps, even lines on the road. I don't quite realise I'm doing it - and it's nearly always alongside some other brain function, it's not like my minds a blank and it's just going ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE etc. I'll be listening to music, or thinking about films, or work, or girls, or pens, or my sock monkey, or football, or the wet patch on the seat, or money, or world hunger, or my hunger. Something else.

I suppose I could liken it to my mind sort of ticking over, tick tick tick, maybe it's something to do with my brain registering a visual intake while my brain is preoccupied with other matters. I dunno.

If I read on the tube or on the bus I invariably can't concentrate properly through the anxiety of missing my stop...plus neither journey really takes long enough to warrant it. If I read it's usually for a long stretch - I don't even like reading on my lunch, too much of a short burst, can't get into it. Also there nothing wrong with the counting, almost forgot that part. I've been told that the counting thing has something to do with tourettes. I looked on wikipedia but couldn't see that bit.

The face pulling on the other hand, I dunno, I put that down to defence mechanism type stuff really, like the attempts at self-deprecating humour. It's a social thing, designed to put people at ease, appear non-threatening, seem like a nice guy. Out on the street the opposite happens, the eyebrows drop, the mouth contracts into a thin line, everyone who makes eye contact gets a dead stare in return. Ask me a question in a shop and you'll likely get a one word answer, no matter what the word is, the translation will be 'leave me the fuck alone stranger'.

I spend short periods of time trying to stop the face thing, it's a lot more annoying than the counting thing, but it's difficult to control. My Mum has a reputation for pulling strange faces when she thinks someone is talking absolute shite, either outright lies or moronic statements. So maybe it's genetic. I can get told to shut up without saying anything, and my face hasn't even moved...it's just one of those faces.

Face-pulling is supposed to be some kind of empathic thing, mimicking the face or the person you're communicating with, showing them you understand - that you're on the same wave-length. The whole deal with Autistics is that their brains don't fire the neurons required for this empathy to take place...so relating to people around them is nigh on impossible. So that can't be me right? I'm all about the face pulling.

It has been pointed out to me that no-one who is mentally ill thinks they are, so the fact that I don't think I am means it's a possibility that I could be. This smells like another way to try and 'break' me. I'm not buying it.

Despite all evidence I have not yet been broken. This blog is quite strong evidence that it's not far off though.

I'm sure the people around me must find my random face pulling tedious, I know I would, but surely everyone has some weird little things they do? Right? People?

It's probably for the best that I haven't gone into the pen thing. One of my friends actually threatened to make a list of my mental foibles, to be distributed to people I know in the event of me 'stepping out of line'. I don't know if she got around to doing it - it was quite long. Maybe a pamphlet.

Something I nearly succeeded in obliterating were my catchphrases, like 'canny' and 'oah...noah', although I lament the loss of the latter as I do my partner in it's execution. He went to a better place. 'Canny' is still kicking around the place, but I've managed to curtail it's use somewhat...it's at a manageable level...which I'd like to get the face-pulling to.

I shouldn't need it...it's turned into a standard greeting in the workplace, where a curt nod would suffice I can feel my cheek muscles bunch and suddenly I'm crushing my face into a painful mock grimace. I walk past someone on the shop floor and feel the need to loll my mouth open and make my eyes go all big and starey. It's cringe worthy.

Maybe I can't change it, maybe I've come too far and it's now ingrained in my personality. Perhaps without it other aspects of my demeanor would change for the worse, perhaps my social skills would deteriorate and I would have to sit away from people in the pub and just send them txt messages. Perhaps some strange people like the faces. I shouldn't have shared about the counting.

I was asked not that long ago what happened to me when I was a kid to make me like I am.

Everything...it all helped. Now you're all stuck with it.

*this post is basically a continuation of something touched on in the comments section of 'the black dog vs ice-cream' over there on the right. In the 'I'm a perfectionist and perfect is a skinned knee...' post. If you care go look.

Science! It works, bitches.

2007-03-21T22:10:00.000Z

I can't think of anything to blog about.

The last one was just pictures under a headline basically, I haven't actually written anything since the one where I whinged about Gondry disappointing me, stupid bicycle riding garlic breath film-maker.

Last night I even considered going out to get drunk and hopefully have some kind of altercation/interesting incident/fight just so I would have something to write about, it was a possible course of action. I was close.

I'm calling this 'blogger's block' at the moment, although my current state of inactivity may well have leaked into other areas of my life...so that might just be a name for the 'blog wing' of my lethargy.

I clashed heads with a tiny Filipino chap at football on Sunday...maybe that has something to do with it.

It's not like I haven't done stuff lately, there was a trip up north, me and my family won a pub quiz (first prize four cans of carling - team name : Quiz Team Aguilera), I saw my new born nephew Harry (name makes me think of ginger princes dressed as Nazi's sliding down hills on silver tea trays while hitting Jews with polo mallets) who is pink and new. I saw my best friend from school and took a tour around his newly built three storey house, and watched a football match on his huge TV. I saw my family, I saw the north sea, I watched some DVDs...that was the holiday. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy it but look...I just covered it in a paragraph...now all I have to deal with is upset family members demanding to know why they got brushed over in a paragraph.

Because.

I went to see some live music last week, Arcade Fire and Bright Eyes. Arcade Fire were very very good, and a good night in Brixton was had by all. Bright Eyes was good too, that was at Koko in Camden, I ended up staying at my friends house and getting about 2 hours sleep while sitting up, then went straight to work. I wasn't even drunk enough that night to do something entertaining...although there is a picture of me on the internet somewhere with a banana in my mouth. It's sideways...I'm not felating it or anything...I wasn't in blowjob school, so don't anyone get excited.

So the gigs were good but somewhat predictable...I can reliably inform you that Patrick Wolf is a piece of shit live. I haven't heard his CD but I wasn't swayed by his Bowie/school boy stomping and kneeling act, it was bollocks.

OK I've filled some space but this thing is still pretty sparse, I've usually seen or heard or done something suitable to do some tapping tappy keyboard stuff to...but when I sit down in front of my dog kennel of a computer the mind goes blank.

Oh yeah I've been looking for a new flat. Kinda. It's a bit stop start. I spent most of last Thursday phoning landlords and estate agents and getting no joy whatsoever. Me and my potential flatmate went to look at a place near Bow with a gobshite from Foxton's. First he took us on a 20 minute walk to his gangrene mini, then talked on his bluetooth headset about as eloquently as rain man, before failing to gain access to the property he took us to. No key fob apparently, no wonder they can't rent the place. After we got back in the car we asked about fees and the such...

'Well we want six weeks deposit and our fee is £376'

'You'd better just drop us off here mate.'

We'd already told him where we worked, he must have thought we were in charge of the gold discs or something.

We also viewed a place in Dalston. It was basically a cellar only darker and damper and smellier. It's top of the list so far. This house-hunting was supposed to continue on Sunday but alas, my esteemed colleague was hungover, so that went out of the window. I'm not even sure whats happening now...

I should have waited till after tomorrow, tomorrow I go to see 300. I have been waiting for this since some point last year, when I saw the trailer and my face exploded. It may be a huge disappointment, but at the moment my predictions are...looks nice...no substance...lots of naked men...lots of blood...someway through the film me waking up and I'm stood roaring at the screen with my shirt off and blood smeared across my face like a wild boar made man.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I bought the first two Ultimates books...I realise I'm very behind the times with this but better late than never I guess. It kicks all kinds of ass. I'm considering making an Iron Man t-shirt. The Hulk is now some kind of idol of mine, he saves the day....he saves the day. I made the 'weeeeeeeee!!!!' noise of excited pleasure partway through the last book, as Monsterwork said he did. It was unintentional, it just happened. I need to get the next one now...more shit to buy.

I would have made some t-shirts recently but am experiencing difficulties finding some more of the iron on paper I use...which is a pain. I also started writing a Viking's versus Knights type invasion story...prompted by the recent war interest and by watching Conan. It's going slow...but going. I might scrap it.

Hopefully the next one of these will be a bit more focused and perhaps be about something, this one is basically exercise for my fingers...and now...a photo!

I am bored and have photoshop.

Northern Exposure

2007-03-08T21:21:00.000Z

These are some pictures from my recent journey north.

They hate me, because I'm French.

2007-02-20T21:20:00.000Z

There's no point to this video. It's not a commission or something that is designed to be released. It's an extra on the 'Work of Director' edition for Michel Gondry, because he felt like making it. None of the others have done that, I doubt it would even occur to them.

The thing about Michel Gondry is that he's stuck in his own head. He indulges his own imagination and tastes to an extent that other directors would shy away from. He's making films purely for his own enjoyment and entertainment, and the audience feels like an afterthought, if he thinks of them at all. That's probably unfair, but it's what it feels like.

The Science of Sleep is basically a loosely plotted excuse for Gondry to explore his own dreams and fascinations, his own neurosis and philosophy. He goes overboard with the surreal dream sequences and off-kilter scripting, completely in line with his music videos and short films, and indeed with his responses in interviews. He will turn anything in his path to a creative use, twist the most mundane of objects or appliances until it appears nearly magical. It's a charming enterprise, but without the restraint or editing of another creative force in collaboration...it's completely at the mercy of Gondry's own imagination.

There are so many autobiographical aspects in the film that it's a fair assumption that the dynamic of the central relationship in the film is one that Gondry has had experience of first hand, and it's easy to imagine lines from the film being drawn from Gondry's own life - indeed the main protagonist seems to be based in part on the director - but then again as the author of the script, what should I expect?

In interviews and even in the Foo Fighters video for 'Everlong' he has made mention of a 'giant hands' nightmare which features in an early dream sequence. Stephane in the film wants to make a stop-motion animation - one of Gondry's obsessions, theres a brief knitting sequence also which references back to his ex-girlfriend (featured in the documentary 'I've been twelve forever' who herself featured in the Steriogram 'walkie talkie man' video shot by Gondry which was almost completely - knitting). Stephane just comes across as sooo Gondry it seems plain that it's meant to be him. Except an exaggerated and wholly more delusional Gondry who is nowhere near as likable.

The characters dreams dominate and dictate his life, to the extent that he has difficulty telling the difference between reality and dreams. Dissatisfied with his world he retreats further and more often into his subconscious, to the detriment of his real-life relationships. The guy is fickle, moody, whingy and tiresome. The one thing he has going for him is his imagination (maybe that he looks like Gael Garcia Bernal helps too...I'm not in a position to comment - I have most recently been compared to Ricky Jay), and this seems to be the thing this film is about. His imagination is the first thing Charlotte Gainsbourg's character Stephanie finds intriguing in him, but it's this same imagination that ultimately ruins any chances he ever had.

The scenes between Stephane and the people around him in the 'real world' are the only ones that are affecting, that the audience will draw any kind of feeling for...as the dream sequences will basically wash over as heavy, clumsily drawn out showcases for Gondry's bag of tricks. Theres nothing as clever here as anything he did with Bjork or the White Stripes, and to me it feels like he has maybe blown a chance to make a film that could have been both personal and charming. It still feels personal...but like Thom Yorke doing a covers album of his own work...you like him, and you like his stuff, he's here and everything...but you'd prefer to hear something new...or at least different.

It's not that I didn't like the film, I did. But it was kinda what I was expecting and the flaws were ones you could see coming a mile off once the film started. His next film is another self written project, and to be honest I'm going to be expecting another interesting failure. He's another one of these people that remind me of why I was so interested in becoming a film-maker when I was younger, he makes the prospect of going to the pictures exciting and he'll still rank as a director whose work I will look forward to seeing.

The thing I like about Gondry is he takes the stuff of childhoods and reminds you how much fun it was, all the things you used to build with your lego, the first time you did the cross eyed finger sausage thing, the giant robot called 'zod' with the spinning arm of death you used to draw compulsively, along with how every skyline was one long strip of blue along the top of the page. His brain has seemingly never forgotten how good these things were, or holds them with such rose-tinted regard that his fondness and continued fascination is contagious.

His music videos are all very tactile and all feel very 'made', there's always some trick or illusion happening, something clever. He told Spike Jonze once that when he's making something he views it like a magic trick...it's all mis-direction. While you're looking over here...the trick is happening over there...and visa-versa. Everything is very ingeniously planned and choreographed, and you can see it is...but it's done with such charm you're glad to see the joins, it's better that it's not perfect. His blandest video is the Kylie's 'Come into my world', as there is too much polish, it's an airbrushed Gondry video, so it loses the charm.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is my favourite film. Most of the time. When I tell people this the general reaction is one of mind surprise coupled with a thoughtful 'hmmm'.

It's not the best film I've ever seen, nor is it one I'm going to watch over and over again like I did with Pulp Fiction and the Jerk. But I remember going alone to see it when I was still living and working in Newcastle, and not knowing what to expect. I'd only seen the trailer about a week before and hadn't read anything about it, apart from how the credits were about 15 minutes after the film had started. This sounded dangerously weird at the time, so off I went.

When I came out I was extremely bemused and thoughtful, so much so that I managed to overshoot my stop on the metro (like the DLR only in Newcastle and made of coal) by two whole stations. On realising my mistake I elected to walk the distance back to have more time to think about the film before I got home. This had not happened before. I couldn't remember seeing a film like it before.

I think maybe it was a fluke. Fluke is the wrong word...what I think is that it was a very good match of script and director, and I doubt very much Gondry will make anything that matches it as a film. Charlie Kaufman supplied Gondry with the perfect script for him to play with, to fill out and go nuts on. He gave him a leading man who is an artistic type who is shy with girls...like Gondry, and gave him scope for his visual trickery with a film that is nearly one long dream sequence. he also gave him a plot, and structure, and most importantly boundaries...the oscar winning script gave Gondry a bit of restraint. He has heart and ingenuity to spare, hopefully someone will give him a structure and a plot.

*this was written over three days so if it reads a bit dis-jointed...thats why.

Knee Sock Gymnastics.

2007-02-15T22:41:00.000Z

Flattering huh?

I went to Roehampton University today, and wasted a lot of time in the name of science. I was there nearly four hours. I got paid £10. I had to get up at 8am on my day off to do this.

Not worth it.

Fitting that contraption to my head took around 45 minutes. It has electrodes in it, lots of them...check out all the wires, I look like I have rainbow dreads or something. There was some kind of abrasive gel involved, then conductive gel...it's a shame the technology didn't gel.

I was there to help out a friend with his research project...something about neurons and sympathetic reactions and precursors to empathy and how these things were lacking in autistic kids. It was mildly interesting, but as long as I wasn't required to bite down on a wooden spoon while they zapped me with volts I didn't really care. It involved looking at a computer screen in a dark room for extended periods of time...and occasionally pressing a button or two. Maybe would have preferred the zapping, difference between short sharp pain which is over quickly...and drawn out hell.

I felt much like a lab rat. I was fulling expecting to be dropped in a maze and asked to find the cheese.

I was required to try and not move my eyes, to try and not blink, to try not to fall asleep (this causes alpha waves apparently) and to not grind my teeth. This would create 'noisy' readings which would be unusable. Afterwards I was told that I had blinked so few times that i was probably a robot. Score!!!

That was the highpoint. Being called a robot and being told it was over.

I had to do two tests.

Test #1

Dark room. Computer screen. Faces flash on the screen for a split second followed by either an up arrow or a down arrow on either the left or right hand side of the screen. If it's an up arrow I press the up button, if it's a down arrow I press the down button. We go again.

This was in four, five minute blocks of this. Bad.

Test #2

Dark room. Computer screen. Faces flash on the screen, and some very blocky greyscale mosaicy things. I am required to remain alert. If a face appears upside down, I'm allowed to press the space bar. The upside down faces are not frequent.

This was in six, six minute blocks. Horrific.

Thing is it probably doesn't sound that bad, but it really was. I felt myself going uncontrollably cross-eyed at one point, at another I completely zoned out and started thinking about Monica Bellucci...having been shocked to find out some work colleagues were indifferent to her charms the day before. Still aghast.

Here's the kicker though...my 'friend' running these tests managed to run the whole of test #1 and the first block of test #2 without the brain wave recording computer and the test computer connected. So the majority of my time there was a complete waste, as over half the tests I did were in fact unrecorded. Yay for fucking students.

To the friend I was helping out today...you owe me a day off you bastard. I will collect.

Cheers for the panini though.

Fear Inherent? Yeah. Well.

2007-02-08T00:18:00.000Z

I'm older than I was a short while ago. By a year. I had a birthday. 22nd January. Woo.

The day itself was complete and utter shit. Got no cards, no presents, worked a late at work and went home. Went to bed. I talked to one person on the phone, and my mum. That was it. Got a bit depressed. Wah wah wah.

My plan to get some people together to see a film started shaky and swiftly fell apart. This will hopefully be rescheduled for sometime in the near future.

I went to a pub quiz. Won £15 and a bottle of Merlot. Gained briefly inflated head. Had lots of fun. I'm still lamenting the correct answers I was talked out of.

What was the first film Julia Roberts earned $20 million for?

"It's Erin Brokovich"

"No, no....she did it for free...she's friends with Soderburgh"

"Yeah I don't think it's Erin Borokovich either...is it not Pretty Woman?"

"No...it's Erin Brokovich"

"I'm sure it isn't...it's Notting Hill or Oceans 11 or something."

"Fine..it's wrong..but put that."

It was Erin Brokovich. I'm still whinging about it. Any right answer that is overturned for a wrong one will forever now be referred to as an 'Erin Brokovich'. Accompanied by a pointing finger and a 'AHHHHHHHH!!!! Erin Brokovich.'

I'm such a lout.

Wednesday was a day full of Doom. It needs the capital letter. I went to a guy from works leaving do cos, well, it was in a pub and I'd just been paid. That's usually the only excuse I need.

I should have eaten something after work...and not drunk so much...and er...not called the barmaid a racist when she refused to serve me anymore. There are other things I shouldn't have done that will not be written down here as it may be used in evidence against me in a court of law. I stuck my tongue out a great deal...grinned maniacally...pulled faces...the usual. Said something about 'fear inherent' to Shireen and Dahlia. Needless to say i can't remember the majority of the night and have no idea what I meant by 'fear inherent', or indeed what it means really. Where did I learn a word like inherent? Have I been visiting libraries or reading dictionaries while shitfaced also? Maybe my drunkard side wants to be better educated, I'm sure he'll take over completely one day.

Unfortunately I didn't manage to get into a fight, but I'm sure it wasn't from lack of trying. I was a bit agro apparently. I can't believe I called a barmaid a racist. According to reports i was banging on about how 'it's like that thing on big brother...it's discrininashhhtion.'

To which she said...'You're slurring...and swaying.'

Check-mate.

It's finally dawned on me that the nights I have the most fun are the ones where I can REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED. It's a small detail, but important.

The quiz was way more fun than the attempt at alcohol suicide. We won money, we won booze, I didn't get weeks worth of guilt and I didn't fall asleep on the bus again and end up in North Finchley again. Bus drivers must be getting tired of shaking me awake at the end of the line. I'm getting tired of falling off the wall outside my house as I scramble over it in a tired and emotional state. I'm just tired in general lately.

I've got to get out of here man.

It could be a turning point. I went out last Friday and left before it got messy. Had a bit of fun...and got out of there before all hell broke loose. I was quite proud of myself, it's a young mans game anyway...I'm getting too old for this shit.

The pub quiz will hopefully be a regular thing, even though we did bollocks the last time we went. We won a lollipop. Between 4 of us. The team name was 'Ultimate Unicorn Ninja Power Force'.

I'm going to try for something a bit more manly next time...I think that one was cursed. We sounded like Power Rangers. Answered questions like Power Rangers fans, we were dire.

Lots of Erin Brokovich's.

Theres one line there for each year I've been alive. Still thinking about the Fountain too much. Stupid self-portrait marathon.

What kind of tree is it anyway?

2007-02-05T23:39:00.000Z

Thank fuck for Darren Aronofsky. Everyone goes mental for the beauty and imagery in Pan's Labyrinth while this thing is getting slammed around worse than Rocky's midriff and buried deeper than a real mans feelings. Stay down there feelings...you're not needed or wanted.

It's like watching the skinny awkward girl at school being bullied, when you just knew that two years later when she had a modelling contract everyone would be like 'oh yeah...she was amazing'. Shortsighted is what it is.

The film I'm talking about is the Fountain by the way. That one with the love story set over three different time periods. Yeah, that one the Metro, pinnacle of cinema journalism that it is, saw fit to give one star.

I like the film. I'm fighting it's corner.

Fuck you Metro.

It's ambitious and over-reaching and feels like it's been cut down from an epic to a beautiful but flawed mess. But it's still brilliant, just because it's like nothing else you'll see this year, and quite unlike anything you'll see for a while to come to judge by the way it's been received and buried. I'll be surprised if it starts a trend for philosophical romantic image heavy tai-chi sci-fi.

Which is disappointing.

As much as I enjoyed the film as it is, my mouth is already watering at the prospect of a maybe a directors cut dvd, which more fleshed out plot and characters, just more really. The budget being cut in half before production began is telling, you can see a bigger picture that was intended, but it does Aronofsky credit that he has produced something so grand and distinctive with relatively limited resources. I don't know if Aronofsky trained or worked as a Graphic Designer or Photographer before making films (I doubt it - young as he is - but I haven't researched it despite the name of my blog) but the attention to composition and detail is in evidence even more than in his earlier work. Brilliant textures and rich, high contrast colours dominate most scenes, it makes hacks like Bay and Tony Scott (the wrong brother) look like children with a copy of photoshop.

"Look mummy if I press this button it goes all blue. And this one makes it go yellow. Can Jerry come around to play Transformers please?"

"NweeeearrrrrwwwperrcrraaaaashhhhhKABOOMsccrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!"

Gah.

I can't really 'review' films. I don't have the film theory smarts. It looks pretty, the acting is Ok, it sounds pretty too. It's interesting, it's affecting...it's really fucking memorable and I'd already been to see it again if it wasn't £12.50 a go.

The thing that's getting to me is the fact that Bay and his cohorts can spend £100 million plus on pieces of shit like the Island and fucking Pirates 2 when Aronofsky and Terry Gilliam have to panhandle for a fraction of said amount...if anyone will give them anything at all.

I'd take interesting messy failures over huge dire star vehicles any day off the week. I might start boycotting films that cost over £20 million. I probably won't though. After all this waiting I can't just not go to see 300, and I imagine that cost upwards of £20 million. Maybe not but again...I haven't researched it.

Anyway I think you should all go to see the Fountain. Maybe if it makes enough money they'll let the people who can make amazing films, uh, make them.

Extracts from Vincent Gallo's Merchandise Website.

2007-01-21T17:16:00.000Z

"VINCENT GALLO evenings, weekends escort.
wish, dream or fantasy with VINCENT GALLO, ladies only

Have you ever watched a movie and fallen in love with one of the actors? The way they looked or a character they played? Afterwards you thought of them over and over. Daydreaming, imagining things, sexy things. When I was very young I was madly in love with Tuesday Weld and Charlotte Rampling. On my 14th birthday I went to see the film Rolling Thunder and had my biggest crush of all on the actress Linda Haynes. I wished and wished and wished everyday that I could meet all these girls. I thought of a lot of sexy things with Susan Blakely after seeing her in Lords of Flatbush. In my mind I could do with her anything I wanted to do. So believe me, I know and understand what it's like to wish and dream about spending time with a movie star. Doing things that couples do. Couples in love. At least couples where the guy is hot and knows how to handle a chick.

I, Vincent Gallo, star of such classics as Buffalo 66 and The Brown Bunny have decided to make myself available to all women. All women who can afford me, that is. For the modest fee of $50,000 plus expenses, I can fulfill the wish, dream, or fantasy of any naturally born female. The fee covers one evening with Vincent Gallo. For those who wish to enjoy my company for a weekend, the fee is increased to a mere $100,000. Heavy set, older, red heads and even black chicks can have me if they can pay the bill. No real female will be refused. However, I highly frown upon any male having even the slightest momentary thought or wish that they could ever become my client. No way Jose. However, female couples of the lesbian persuasion can enjoy a Vincent Gallo evening together for $100,000. $200,000 buys the lesbos a weekend. A weekend that will have them second-guessing.

I am willing to travel worldwide to accommodate clients. However, travel days are billed at $50,000 per plus all premium flight fees. Scanning for STD's is required as is bathing and grooming prior to our encounter. Detailed photos of potential clients also required prior. An extra fee for security to protect me is charged on top of the fantasy fee. Security fees will vary depending on the details of an encounter and how much security I will need.

Potential clients are advised to screen the controversial scene from The Brown Bunny to be sure for themselves that they can fully accommodate all of me. Clients who have doubt may want to test themselves with an unusually thick and large prosthetic prior to meeting me. You may be surprised just how much you can handle and how good it feels."

and then there's...

"Vincent Gallo's Sperm

$1 Million

Price includes all costs related to one attempt at an in-vitro fertilization. (A $50,000 value) If the first attempt at in vitro fertilization is unsuccessful, purchaser of sperm must pay all medical costs related to additional attempts. Mr. Gallo will supply sperm for as many attempts as it takes to complete a successful fertilization and successful delivery. Sperm is 100% guaranteed to be donated by Mr. Gallo who is drug, alcohol and disease free. If the purchaser of the sperm chooses the option of natural insemination, there is an additional charge of $500,000. However, if after being presented detailed photographs of the purchaser, Mr. Gallo may be willing to waive the natural insemination fee and charge only for the sperm itself. Those of you who have found this merchandise page are very well aware of Mr. Gallo's multiple talents, but to add further insight into the value of Mr. Gallo's sperm, aside from being multi talented in all creative fields, he was also multi talented as an athlete, winning several awards for performing in the games of baseball, football and hockey and making it to the professional level of grand prix motorcycle racing. Mr. Gallo is 5'11" and has blue eyes. There are no known genetic deformities in his ancestry (no cripples) and no history of congenital diseases. If you have seen The Brown Bunny, you know the potential size of the genitals if it's a boy. (8 inches if he's like his father.) I don't know exactly how a well hung father can enhance the physical makeup of a female baby, but it can't hurt. Mr. Gallo also presently maintains a distinctively full head of hair and at the age of 43 has surprisingly few gray hairs. Though his features are sharp and extreme, they would probably blend well with a softer, more subtly featured female. Mr. Gallo maintains the right to refuse sale of his sperm to those of extremely dark complexions. Though a fan of Franco Harris, Derek Jeter, Lenny Kravitz and Lena Horne, Mr. Gallo does not want to be part of that type of integration. In fact, for the next 30 days, he is offering a $50,000 discount to any potential female purchaser who can prove she has naturally blonde hair and blue eyes. Anyone who can prove a direct family link to any of the German soldiers of the mid-century will also receive this discount. Under the laws of the Jewish faith, a Jewish mother would qualify a baby to be deemed a member of the Jewish religion. This would be added incentive for Mr. Gallo to sell his sperm to a Jew mother, his reasoning being with the slim chance that his child moved into the profession of motion picture acting or became a musical performer, this connection to the Jewish faith would guarantee his offspring a better chance at good reviews and maybe even a prize at the Sundance Film Festival or an Oscar. To be clear, the purchase of Mr. Gallo's sperm does not include the use of the name Gallo. The purchaser must find another surname for the child. "

This stuff is on his website. Honest.

Destroy that Garrison.

2007-01-18T20:56:00.000Z

I was going to do a blog about Band of Brothers which I have finally gotten around to buying and watching, and which I'm immediately re-watching. Because it's so good. Instead I'm going to bang on about an idea I've had before that has been rekindled while watching the aforementioned televisual treat.

It almost definitely won't sound as good once I've typed it out, but I'm in a sharing mood.

Basically the idea is some kind of war drama, set in three different time periods - so through three different wars. The stories would be running alongside each other so elements of each tale can be juxtaposed against one another, or even compliment or reinforce parts of the narrative. It already sounds fiddly and complicated. Gimmicky.

For a basic example the first time line could be WWII (an underused resource obviously), the second could be Vietnam (again not much creative output based on this), and the third Iraq or some fictional war in the near future. The main protagonist in each timezone could even be a different generation of the same family, although I'm not sure how keen I am on that idea. The theory is that episodically the three different timezones would be experiencing elements of war in fundamentally similar but in practise very different ways. I've nearly confused myself already.

Plus I keep reminding myself of lots of inherent problems. War has been done lots. Done to death in fact. It would be incredibly hard to make something without referencing a large body of work. I saw Jarhead last year and enjoyed it, enjoyed it even more after seeing it again on a shiny DVD, but it didn't feel like I was watching anything new. It didn't feel like an original take on anything, it felt like lots of other war films bundled together. It would be difficult to avoid doing the same.

Another thing is the fact that although there is usually a main protagonist in all stories, in war it's a lot more about the squad/platoon/company etc. There needs to be a wide range of characters to create a believable world in such an environment. My idea would need this times three. In Band of Brothers it takes a while before you start recognising some characters as distinct characters. They're all in the same uniform, doing similar things. It's going to get confusing. It would require switching between three different places and times without losing any dramatic flow, without wrecking the pacing and destroying any mood or atmosphere that has been created. With all this switching about going on it's going to be difficult to get a feel for or get to know the characters, so whatever happens to any of them - no-ones going to give a shit anyway. No point.

Oh yeah and the idea was to do it as a comic book/graphic novel type deal. Maybe have a different artist and writer combo for each timezone, to help make them distinctive and easily recognized as a particular strand. This throws up all kinds of problems. Loads and loads of them. It would be some kind of layout nightmare for a kick-off, and the finished result would most likely look pasted together and incoherent. Also ugly.

I've pretty much convinced myself that this was a flawed idea from the start. Maybe it could work but I very much doubt that it would work in my hands, not if I can't even explain it properly via the medium of blog. But come on - war, three wars in fact, maybe a bit of referential humour, violence, heroics, glory, violence, and if we go for near future war idea, a bit of sci-fi. Who wouldn't want to see that?

This isn't getting t-shirts made is it. Eye on the prize till-monkey, eye on the prize.

Hello Ladies.

2007-01-15T00:49:00.000Z

I met this guy in a pub last night. He's great, he's called Josh and he works in the city. He's my new best friend and we're going to go and see Arcade Fire in a couple of months cos he's got a spare ticket. We played Jenga (he's rubbish), and then and won £15 on the quiz machine by beating Jim Bowen at his own game. Bully didn't know what hit him.

Lies lies upon lies.

Well I did go to a pub last night. But there was no great bonding between me and Josh, other than me taking his photo without permission. They didn't even have a quiz machine as far as I could see.

I was in some kind of local pub near New Cross Gate that had a wealth of weird shit hanging off the walls/ceilings/bar staff. Lots and lots of dead animals, rifles, bedpans, a horse drawn coach with zebras in (really), the steering wheel off a ship, and of course skeletons. The bar staff had a minimum age of 80, as did the band which started up half-way through the night, playing synthesiser covers of all your favourite hits. My personal high point was Ruby Tuesday, although Whiter Shade of Pale was impressive also. If this all wasn't intimidating enough, I was surrounded by a large group of people who didn't know me. Let me explain.

I was there for a reason - one of my best friends' friends was having a birthday party there. If that makes sense.

I have met the birthday girl quite a few times before, so I knew her. That's one. I was there with two of my friends. So that's three people I knew. Out of about 40 people who were there.

I left knowing two more people. I can remember one of those peoples names. I wasn't even drunk.

I'm pretty sure that say...five years ago I would have talked to at least half the people there for the party...I would have remembered the names of most of them. I used to be more outgoing, more gregarious is what I guess I'm saying. Last night I just couldn't get it together.

The Birthday girl is one of the legion of people I know who is a teacher, so most of her friends are teachers, or did the same teaching course as her etc. As I have stated in an earlier blog I have nothing against teachers, some of my good friends are teachers, but teachers seem to talk to other teachers about teaching a lot. Joy. You tell them you work in a dvd shop and you see 'loser' flash through their eyes - much in the manner pound signs would if I had said 'lottery winner'.

I spent most of my time talking to the two friends I went with, occasionally eavesdropping on conversations around me about people and things I am not privy to. One of my friends managed to force his way into a conversation about the pros and cons of smoking. Halfway through this dialogue he turns to me and says 'Come on Davey, you can say something interesting or funny...you're being really quiet.' He says it quite loud, loud enough so these strangers look at each other like I've just fell off the special bus. I manage to reply 'Like what? What would you like me to say?' And now we look like a bickering married couple.

I wasn't even in a bad mood, I was quite cheery...I didn't have a bad time or anything. I've never been the life and soul of the party but I could introduce myself to strangers and find some kind of common ground to talk about, sarcasm works well...people respond. I have some kind of face pulling compulsion also, this used to help. Maybe I need to learn some new tricks.

I managed to talk to one of the teachers about photography briefly, despite quickly talking myself out of my depth. I showed him my digital camera, he grimaced. Fucking purists.

I talked to this one girl for quite a long time (feel quite bad about not being able to remember her name - group introductions suck - she will therefore be referred to as 'this one girl'), about arty stuff, and music and that was OK...but I did get the feeling it was mostly because she kinda got stuck sitting next to me and there was no room to physically turn away. Poor this one girl. She did give me some useful information about an art collective in Deptford who have their own screen printing facilities. This could be t-shirt country. Thank you this one girl.

Anyway that was my complete foray into discussion with strangers, and it's a sorry state of affairs. I doubt it's really going to dent my confidence in my social skills - luckily I know people who are even sorrier than me. They make me look like Hugh Hefner. I know it sounds like it but I don't pick my friends to make me feel better. They have other qualities. I've probably just mortally offended half my friends. Brilliant.

I've got a sneaking suspicion that I wasn't trying very hard either. I think my brain has clicked into 'you've got enough friends, be careful or you'll end up with more than you can handle, a man can drown in riches'. My brain wouldn't say it like that though, it wouldn't be as direct, more like...

'Yeah they're probably nice people and all that but look at that fucking skeleton!! and over there...a big dead deer or something!! AND they've got zebras!!! You must give them all names and backstorys in your head, if someone talks to you just pull a face'.

So this is Mike, we talked about LCD Soundsystem and violent Korean films. He like that Oldboy. He once went on a date with Gwen Stefani. He reckons that Josh guy is a 'prick' and that the zebras are gay together. He drinks white wine spritzers with two straws and has an audition for the second His Dark Materials film as the Armoured Bears arse double.

He's training to be a teacher.

Velocitator And Deceleratrix.

2007-01-04T17:28:00.000Z

Wahay. Yee Ha. Yahtzee.
Happy New Year.

It's been a funny couple of weeks, the run up to crimbo and then through to New Year and the inevitable exit of Xmas temps last night. It's been the lovely combination of days that drag in weeks that fly.

About a week before Xmas I started a long stint at Canning Town, a picturesque and charming little warehouse housing goods for selling. To get to it you walk over a bridge that smells of sick and frequently has ripped up porn magazines scattered over the road. There's also a pub with blacked out windows that has strippers performing on weekday lunchtimes. Allegedly.

I have been told that I was lucky to be there.

I took some temps with me.

They were OK as far as temps go despite being under the impression that one of the weekend part-timers was a supervisor. Idiots. There's just something about the place which turns your brain to mush, within about two days you start to lose the will to live. With any luck I won't have to go back. I suspect I'm not that lucky.

Propping up that week was a lovely lovely double-shift. It was lovely. Someone managed to find something to play at 5/6 in the morning that made my head hurt even more than Pink Floyd did on the last one. Fucking Supertramp. My head started to vibrate and I wanted to eat cardboard while shoving the Supertramp CD down someones ear hole. I did get to watch the last hour of Jaws on my 'lunch break' at one in the morning. I just sat with a big grin on my face staring at Quint while drinking 2 cans of coke. Having the foresight to buy the coke before the shift made it all the sweeter as I first watched everyone else wrestle with a clearly knackered drinks machine in the staffroom, before they had to troop out onto the cold cold streets in search of overpriced caffeine goodness. In that moment I felt like a king.

Xmas itself was a good one. Saw my brother for more than half an hour in what seems like years, saw my nephews, got fed lots. All good. Also got some Nike sunglasses and some Jack Daniels, so I've started to refer to myself as a sporty drunk. Or a leisure lush. Other people have been calling me a lush lately, apparently we've travelled back in time to a place where people still use the word. The last time I heard it was as the name of a band.

There's about this much *holds fingers about a centimetre apart* Jack left now. Nice.

I also saw Miami Vice again, and I liked it a whole lot more on the second viewing. I was distinctly underwhelmed when I saw it on release and I can't really work out why anymore. Maybe I was just expecting something different, or maybe I'm a pleb. Either way I've seen about three films now which would have been in my top ten list, making the thing a mockery now. I knew I should have waited.

I managed to lock myself out of my house in between Xmas and New Year. I was on a late so didn't get home and realise there was no-one else in till about ten at night. On phoning my flatmates I was informed they were out on the piss at a pub in the west end. So I went there to fetch some keys.

I got home again at about four in the morning. I met the creator of American sitcom 'How I Met Your Mother' and his actress girlfriend. I told him how much I liked his sitcom. I don't.

'Oh yeah I've seen that...it's on BBC2...yeah it's really good but it's on at funny times' etc.

I felt dirty afterwards. It wasn't like he was going to offer me a job or anything for kissing his arse. Gah...politeness. I disgust myself.

We also ended up in some theatre bar that seemed to be open and busy 24 hours a day. I could imagine the League of Gentlemen drinking there with Stephen Fry and Geri Halliwell. They had various wankers playing piano and singing in one end of the bar, it was like a huge gang of middle-aged drama students systematically wheeling out show tunes and murdering them. Why were we there? It was open.

I had to start work at 10.30 the next morning. One of the managers said I looked like I was coming down with something. I muttered back something about tiredness.

New Years Eve was spent in Ealing with a small group of friends in a local pub. We spent most of the evening huddled around a quiz machine trying to beat Noel Edmonds and Jim Bowen at their own games. We nearly missed midnight altogether as we had nearly found out who had done what where on Cluedo. I don't think it helped that we won £10 quite early on...it just gave us a lust for glory.

We did get free champagne and stole some helium balloons. So we got drunk on fizzy wine and said 'oooohhh ladyboys' in comical high pitched voices. There's a few pictures on my flickr page if you clicky click on the 'mirrorbabies' link yonder. What else could you possibly want from a New Year?

A new puter, a new ipod, and 300 to come out quicker please. Come on it's my birthday soon, one out of three?

Sorry Mum.

2006-12-19T23:06:00.000Z

I did a bad thing.

I feel guilt and shame.

Fortunately most of the people I've told about it find it hilarious and enjoy mocking me about it. Brilliant.

A week ago last Friday, the 8th of December, I got into a fight in a pub. OK not strictly true. I didn't get into a fight, I kinda started a fight. With a stranger. And now I feel a bit like I'm some kind of violent mental. Which I'm not. I'm pretty sure I'm not.

Anyway I was on a night out for a friends birthday, had been drinking, was quite drunk. We could call it merry, or jolly. That would be lies, lets call it.....er, shitfaced. A stranger approached me and with one hand grasped the collar of my stripey jumper and with the other hand shoved ice cubes down the front of said jumper. Then he backed away laughing his head off and all set for a good chortle with his mates at the fat bearded cunt he'd just made a fool of. In my drunken state this irked me somewhat more than it should have and I reacted slightly out of character to the situation.

It mainly involved me being violent towards the cheeky chap while screaming threats and obscenities in his face. Then being dragged away.

There was no aftermath or repercussions in any way, I didn't get thrown out of the pub, the bloke and his mates didn't come and find me to sort me out or anything. Nothing at all. Weird. I don't think I hurt him badly, I didn't hear any ambulances. I'm not handy enough in a fight to do proper damage I think.

The reason I'm feeling so bad about it isn't because I'm particularly sorry about what I did to the bloke, more that I lost control in a way that I haven't really done before. I don't really remember ever getting a red haze descending. I haven't been in a fight for many many years and I don't remember EVER starting one. I wasn't myself and I didn't like it much. I don't think of myself as someone who would really resort to violence, I'm more the type to be a peacemaker or mediator for some other drunken fool with an appetite for destruction. I just don't know what happened.

I told a guy at work about it, who told another guy at work. They started calling me Jason Bourne. I have asked them not to tell other people about it but this simply means that they tell people where I work to call me Jason Bourne because it winds me up. My boss called me it today on the phone. He doesn't know why, someone just told him to. A girl I work with said -

'Oh, someone told me to call you Jack something'

'What?'

'Nolan or someone..'

'Was it Stefan?...Did he say to call me Jason Bourne?'

'That's it!'

'Do you know who Jason Bourne is?'

'No.'

I'm not being bullied or anything, it's just an event I would rather not have happened, as what's to stop it happening again? Next time I get drunk am I going to kick off at some guy who spills my pint or stands on my toe? I haven't had a drink since that night but that's not really by design, just circumstance. Going tee-total does seem slightly more appealing to me now, but I think may be an over-reaction. I'm unsure...

Shit happens. There's nothing I can do about it now. I could make a vain attempt to find the guy and apologise to him but I don't really want to. He was a twat. I've already apologised to the people I was out with and they just make jokes about my temper and ice-cubes.

Bah. I think I've whinged about it enough for now. It's starting to feel like I'm being a pussy about it. Maybe I should start to revel in the modicum of notoriety that can be derived from my pugilistic exploits.

I'll probably just carry on as normal and hope it doesn't happen again. Or I might have to stop drinking, and nobody wants that.

I got a txt from work colleague today, and I quote -

"U officially made the 'who would win in a fight? Conversation. Jack Bauer, Jason Bourne, James Bond, or Davey Blackett?'".

I vote for Geordie Bond, I wouldn't last five seconds. Unless one of them comes at me with an ice-cube, then I'm a fucking maniac. No prisoners.

I Like To Boogie.

2006-12-16T20:39:00.000Z

Music is nice. I listen to it often on my now indispensable ipod. I listen to it on the way too and from work unless some inconsiderate acquaintance happens to be on the same tube or bus - and I'm forced to converse with them. I listen to everything on random usually, and wait for the strange little coincidental song sequences to crop up. It's a delight. Sometimes I pick an album and listen to it. Some albums were released over the last year that I did this with...and I think - I like this album. This is a list of ten such albums I did this with. Oh yeah, and I'm going to do one sentence for each one. Plus pictures again you lucky people...shhhh...

Let's go there now...

10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Show Your Bones.Rock and roll spasmatron frontwoman in rifftastic meat and potatoes face party.

9. Thom Yorke - The Eraser Worrywart megastar with noodlesome electronic jiggerypokery masking good old radiohead style tunes.

8. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!! - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!! Get past the annoying lead singer to enjoy some of the best indie pop in years, with exclamation marks a bonus.

7. Mates of State - Bring It Back.Twee duo keep it in the family with shifting structures, inventive melodies and more pure fun than you can throw a tiger at.

6. Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins - Rabbit Fur Coat.Imagine Bright Eyes can sing, is three girls, and goes a bit gospel, only better than you just imagined.

5. Belle & Sebastian - The Life Pursuit.Scottish pop with lashings of swear words upon varying degrees of melancholy and rather funky sock looseners.

4. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House.
Frequently beautiful and heavily textured country rock that a person can quite easily and happily get lost in, frequently.

3. Mogwai - Mr Beast.
Quiet, quiet, quiet, quiet, loud, loud, loud, loud, loud, LOUD, LOUDER, quiet, quiet, quiet, nice.

2. TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain.
Sounds like stuff falling on your head repeatedly and with rhythm while it sings to you with backing vocals by David Bowie.

1. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene.

A glorious mess of instruments and and voices that come together to make the best sound you'll hear all year, it might just take most of the year for you to get it.

Next year - haiku's. Or maybe I'll try and do the whole thing without using the letter e. Writing about music is generally a fruitless task, it may as well have a gimmick.