My lounge has relatively few items in it. Ever since I got divorced and got my own house I've made the lounge look almost exactly like you would expect if interior design was handled by a nerdish chimp with ADHD.
I'm sitting in said lounge right now writing this rant, so let me list the essential items that I can see before me.
Large Television. I'm not showing off, but it is vast and shiny. I enjoy HD stuff because it's better than actual life.
Surround Sound Kit. Only now really making use of this. Mainly to disturb my incredibly irritating neighbours by leaving MTV2 on when I'm out. Would also mean that any burglars would be educated on what is good and new in the world of music. Or rather whatever Zane Lowe wants them to watch whilst being sycophantic to the "stars" of Indie music. And the latest U2 video. Which last time I checked didn't fall under the remit of "alternative music".
Xbox 360. Why wouldn't you have one of these?
PS3. To watch Blu Rays. See above, better than life.
Sky Box HD Box. Because I like my yellow animated families to look lifelike. Also, why wouldn't you have Sky? If only for the music channels (even despite Zane Lowe) and awesome dating channels. I recommend that everyone watches those for at least half an hour a day. Wouldn't text any of those numbers on the screen though, a friend told me that they cost a fair bit. That's right, a friend.
Subwoofer. I don't know what it does, but I like saying the word in a welsh accent.
That's it. Nothing else is essential.
I have, for some reason, two coffee tables when at least two less would suffice. One sits on a greying faux-sheepskin rug that I imagine visitors think I use to pose on for my glamour shoots, wearing a pantomined plumbers uniform. The other was purchased from Ikea for around £20 and is used to store anything that I don't really care enough about to display or ever find again. Every now and again I will shove everything that rests on this table into an empty Sainsburys carrier bag and throw it away.
There is no need to have surfaces to put things on when the floor would easily suffice.
I have two identical sofas that look like they've been stolen from a bad nightclub. Not one of the meat-market nightclubs that you KNOW will be rubbish - like the ones my Dad builds - Liquid and Envy, Creation, Oceania and so on. They know that they're dives, with every single punter in there either below 16 years old and female or over 35 years old and male. I refer to the sort of establishment - be it club or bar - that is slightly out of town and run by a man wearing linen trousers, flip flops and a deep vee neck t-shirt from All Saints even if he's slightly overweight. But they're leather and cheap, obviously cheap - but you can imagine them being sat on by orange faced slags on a Thursday night whilst said flip-flop wearer plies them with his most generous servings of his cheapest vodka whilst jingling his BMW keys.
I also have a pointless wicker basket that is part table, part basket. And pointless. I have no idea what's in there at the moment.
(Pause to look)
Nothing but crap. A three year old newspaper. A PS2 steering wheel. Old flyers. A GTA San Andreas guidebook. Utterly pointless.
My mother will often tell me that I need more furniture, that I need to brighten the place up somewhat. No. I would improve my lounge enormously if I got rid of the tables, sofas and wicker box and merely bought one large beanbag and an extra duvet to lie on and possibly build the occasional fort.
Trips to Ikea fill me with rage. It's a trite comedic point to mention the names they give their products - because Swedish people are wacky - so that's not my main issue. My issue is having to watch people somehow believing that their produce is of high quality merely because their friends have an identical house filled with Ikea shit, and also having to watch people arguing about which plastic chair would look best in their pointless little house.
I have never entered a DFS and never will. I'm aware that I'm meant to look at their discounted prices and be amazed, but to me £499 for a red dralon sofa with huge arms and segments of mock wood doesn't really strike me as a bargain. The fact that the people who shop there seem to think that their prices have ever been higher than what they currently advertise fascinates me. It's the unquestioning conformity to accepting what they show as "offers" that I enjoy. People slavishly nodding at their adverts and queuing outside on Boxing Day believing that it's the best thing to do. The same people attended Midnight Mass two days prior to that, believing what they were told once again, showing up because they felt they had to.
If you're religious by the way, I bear you no ill will nor mean to cause you offense with that last remark. Unless you have the chintziest lounge in the world - if that is the case, I think we need to have a little chat.
Sunday 29 March 2009
Tuesday 24 March 2009
8: Alcohol
I will be the first person to admit that there is a side of alcohol that I do actually like. It's not along the lines of it getting me drunk - I haven't had a drink since the age of 20 and I don't miss that at all. I used to drink quite a bit - some people know this, some people who have known me for a while are probably more unaware. To cut a long story short, I used to love a drink. But I would drink on my own in my bedroom, peeling wallpaper from my walls and writing Belle and Sebastian lyrics on them whilst being half emo, half nerd and feeling sorry for myself whilst trying to perform the highest possible combo on Killer Instinct. Trust me, that's not an easy couple of things to juggle when you've drunk a bottle of Asda own-brand vodka.
As I was a lone drinker I've never had the pleasure of going out and getting drunk with my friends. When I see documentaries about binge drinking teenagers in faceless northern towns I feel a pang of jealousy. I've never gone out, drunk twenty pints and then flashed my arse at a policeman whilst unbelievably still eating a kebab. So I feel I've missed out on a large part of what makes the British, well, British. I'm more akin to someone from Finland. Bookish, rarely awake during the sunny daylight hours, likely to drink large amounts of vodka in a room full of pine furniture whilst listening to black metal and liable to end up as a corpse on a train track.
The saddest part of this is that I have friends who have known me for eons and have always expressed a desire to see me drunk without realising that there is a mathematical certainty that they have - presuming they knew me before May 25th 1998. That said, I've been out socially drinking with most of them since - just with me enjoying my poison of caffeine and sugar instead. Or Nandos. I love that Piri Piri shit.
As I started discussing before my explanatory diversion, there are aspects of drinking that I really, genuinely love.
A: Comedy Audiences Drinking
If people didn't drink then I would be considerably less amusing. On many days I remain not-all-that amusing anyway, dependent on what side of bed I woke up on. Which is a bizarre phrase in itself. I always tend to wake up on my front, looking like I've been dropped from the ceiling (in the position Johnny Depp died in from A Nightmare on Elm Street) onto the left hand side of my lumpy old bed.
Any comedian will tell you that a mildly hammered audience is great fun. They seem to like me considerably more when they've been binge drinking for the last day or so and smell of blackcurrent and amyl nitrate. I applaud the people of Britain for drinking and coming to watch comedy. Do please carry on.
B: Nights Out
The few that I have, I enjoy. I like being the sober one who can remind people what happened to them when they awake the following morning face-down in a knockoff deep-fried chicken box. With a wing bone in their ear and smushed-in chips and ketchup on their carpet.
The only real issue I have is that I can't nor do I want to dance. So, dear friends, enjoy your drinks. But please do not drag me towards a dancefloor if "Horny" by Mousse T starts pumping over the sound system.
However, there are some things that I hate with a venom that would rival some kind of sick hybrid Scorpion-Spider-Cobra. A Scoridra.
1: Breast-Flashing Girls
Let me clear two things up. I like girls. I am also fond of breasts. I'm less fond of mine, although they are both pert and ample. When I was doing all my journo bollocks in my early twenties (not in THE early twenties, they were too busy with the charleston) I would find that flashing a camera around in your average meat-market nightclub would yield countless - let's just call them slags - whacking their funbags out presuming I was a talent scout for Loaded. Novelty wise, this was entertaining for the first couple of times it happened. When you're faced with a constant stream of orange-faced harlots with broken shoes and cheap dresses made of Rayon then it gets old fast. I wish they made dresses out of crayons though, that would kick ass.
2: Groups of People Drinking and Acting Like They're In a War
Here's the thing. You might have decided to go out on a night out with 5 of your closest friends. And that's cool, bonding is nice be you male or female. That's what your night out is all about - having fun, laughing at stupid stuff and thinking that crisps count as a meal. You are not in an elite fighting squadron in Vietnam. If someone chooses to go home early, they are not some kind of conscientious objector. If someone passes out, they are not a casualty of war. If you are one of the last two people left out, you're not some kind of elite hardcore unit. Although more AK47s would make the average Saturday night way more interesting for me as an observer.
3: Wine Twats
The way I see it, there are two types of wine.
RED - Tastes like vinegar
WHITE - Tastes like battery acid
I could try and parlay my immense knowledge into a TV series where I travel the globe talking about the subtle strains of elderberries in one particular bottle of french-made plonk, but I find my method of identification much easier.
And Rose is merely for people who want a drink that is less vinegary and acidic but still tastes like a waste of time. But it's pink! Ooh, pretty. No. Jordan is pink, and she looks like a pneumatic unicorn.
4: People Claiming to Like the Taste of Booze
Following on from my previous point - I have many friends who claim to enjoy the taste of alcohol. They don't. They associate the taste of alcohol with being drunk and happy and that's perfectly fine. But imagine if alcohol had none of these effects, or if medicine tasted like lager or gin. We'd all hate it.
I reckon saying you like booze for the way it tastes is akin to enjoying sex because of the faces it makes you pull.
Of course, this is all just rambling from me. I get like this when I'm pissed. I also have my breasts pressed against the glass of my front window as a lady walks past with a Labrador.
http://twitter.com/jimsmallman
As I was a lone drinker I've never had the pleasure of going out and getting drunk with my friends. When I see documentaries about binge drinking teenagers in faceless northern towns I feel a pang of jealousy. I've never gone out, drunk twenty pints and then flashed my arse at a policeman whilst unbelievably still eating a kebab. So I feel I've missed out on a large part of what makes the British, well, British. I'm more akin to someone from Finland. Bookish, rarely awake during the sunny daylight hours, likely to drink large amounts of vodka in a room full of pine furniture whilst listening to black metal and liable to end up as a corpse on a train track.
The saddest part of this is that I have friends who have known me for eons and have always expressed a desire to see me drunk without realising that there is a mathematical certainty that they have - presuming they knew me before May 25th 1998. That said, I've been out socially drinking with most of them since - just with me enjoying my poison of caffeine and sugar instead. Or Nandos. I love that Piri Piri shit.
As I started discussing before my explanatory diversion, there are aspects of drinking that I really, genuinely love.
A: Comedy Audiences Drinking
If people didn't drink then I would be considerably less amusing. On many days I remain not-all-that amusing anyway, dependent on what side of bed I woke up on. Which is a bizarre phrase in itself. I always tend to wake up on my front, looking like I've been dropped from the ceiling (in the position Johnny Depp died in from A Nightmare on Elm Street) onto the left hand side of my lumpy old bed.
Any comedian will tell you that a mildly hammered audience is great fun. They seem to like me considerably more when they've been binge drinking for the last day or so and smell of blackcurrent and amyl nitrate. I applaud the people of Britain for drinking and coming to watch comedy. Do please carry on.
B: Nights Out
The few that I have, I enjoy. I like being the sober one who can remind people what happened to them when they awake the following morning face-down in a knockoff deep-fried chicken box. With a wing bone in their ear and smushed-in chips and ketchup on their carpet.
The only real issue I have is that I can't nor do I want to dance. So, dear friends, enjoy your drinks. But please do not drag me towards a dancefloor if "Horny" by Mousse T starts pumping over the sound system.
However, there are some things that I hate with a venom that would rival some kind of sick hybrid Scorpion-Spider-Cobra. A Scoridra.
1: Breast-Flashing Girls
Let me clear two things up. I like girls. I am also fond of breasts. I'm less fond of mine, although they are both pert and ample. When I was doing all my journo bollocks in my early twenties (not in THE early twenties, they were too busy with the charleston) I would find that flashing a camera around in your average meat-market nightclub would yield countless - let's just call them slags - whacking their funbags out presuming I was a talent scout for Loaded. Novelty wise, this was entertaining for the first couple of times it happened. When you're faced with a constant stream of orange-faced harlots with broken shoes and cheap dresses made of Rayon then it gets old fast. I wish they made dresses out of crayons though, that would kick ass.
2: Groups of People Drinking and Acting Like They're In a War
Here's the thing. You might have decided to go out on a night out with 5 of your closest friends. And that's cool, bonding is nice be you male or female. That's what your night out is all about - having fun, laughing at stupid stuff and thinking that crisps count as a meal. You are not in an elite fighting squadron in Vietnam. If someone chooses to go home early, they are not some kind of conscientious objector. If someone passes out, they are not a casualty of war. If you are one of the last two people left out, you're not some kind of elite hardcore unit. Although more AK47s would make the average Saturday night way more interesting for me as an observer.
3: Wine Twats
The way I see it, there are two types of wine.
RED - Tastes like vinegar
WHITE - Tastes like battery acid
I could try and parlay my immense knowledge into a TV series where I travel the globe talking about the subtle strains of elderberries in one particular bottle of french-made plonk, but I find my method of identification much easier.
And Rose is merely for people who want a drink that is less vinegary and acidic but still tastes like a waste of time. But it's pink! Ooh, pretty. No. Jordan is pink, and she looks like a pneumatic unicorn.
4: People Claiming to Like the Taste of Booze
Following on from my previous point - I have many friends who claim to enjoy the taste of alcohol. They don't. They associate the taste of alcohol with being drunk and happy and that's perfectly fine. But imagine if alcohol had none of these effects, or if medicine tasted like lager or gin. We'd all hate it.
I reckon saying you like booze for the way it tastes is akin to enjoying sex because of the faces it makes you pull.
Of course, this is all just rambling from me. I get like this when I'm pissed. I also have my breasts pressed against the glass of my front window as a lady walks past with a Labrador.
http://twitter.com/jimsmallman
Thursday 19 March 2009
7: The Nintendo Wii
3 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH
I see an article in Edge magazine about the upcoming Nintendo Wii. After loving the NES, SNES, N64 and Gamecube I presume that they can do no wrong, like some kind of video game Eric Cantona. Don't get me wrong, the Gamecube's marketing was their equivalent of leaping into the crowd at Selhurst Park to pummel some oik who had learned French in order to insult their family: You know that it's technically incorrect, but there's a big part of you that loves them for it. Resident Evil 4? That's a masterpiece. Pikmin? Quality. Any machine that has a version of Mario Kart? Sold. I start a fund ready for said machine.
2 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH
I start creating room in my lounge ready for the new machine. I'm still not entirely sure how big it will be, but I find it a place next to the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox 360. Sandwiched twixt subwoofer and DVD rack, the space is pregnant with expectation.
1 MONTH BEFORE LAUNCH
Funds are raised. Then girlfriend (jealous despot with rascist tendencies) starts dropping hints that another member fo the electronic family is possibly not the greatest of ideas. Already tired of her, this does not auger well. Resolve to end the relationship if she insists on pursuing this fallacy. Choose to ignore the need to pre-order a machine as I'd quite like the excitment of queuing for one.
2 WEEKS BEFORE LAUNCH
Disaster strikes. The catylytic converter on my car chooses to die, thus forcing my car to fail its MOT. In desperation, I try to bribe the mechanic to pass my car so I don't have to spend my hard-saved cash. My intention was to slip him £20 or so, but my ham-fisted attempt at winking at him comes across as deeply disturbing flirting in a dangerously heterosexual environment. I am forced to pay for repairs. The racist deals with this news in her usual subtle, caring way: Whooping, cheering and performing the macarena as I break down in tears. The relationship is certainly not long for this world.
1 WEEK BEFORE LAUNCH
All is lost as newspaper reports mention that every single available Wii will sell out on day one. I curse my luck and toy with the idea of spending my saved cash on something frivolous. The racist mentions a holiday, but I'm in no way planning on spending my time with her in another country. That would give her chance to demonstrate her Daily Mail-learned foreign languages: Merely shouting the phrase "Sausage, egg and chips" louder and slower each time until understood in the face of the nearest waiter.
LAUNCH
I watch live on Sky News as the doors open at HMV on Oxford Street and the nerds of London and beyond rush inside to claw at each other and fight (in the loosest sense) over the machines available. Think to myself about nerds: As a rule, the more intelligent people gravitate towards this way of life. Knowledge is power. Should some kind of evil force wish to wipe out all intelligence from a nation, merely stage the mock launch of a mythical video game system (lets call it the Unicorn) and set the countdown clock in Game to a nuclear bomb. HMV that night will have smelled like every branch of Game does around the nation: Of sweat, celibacy and despair.
LAUNCH PLUS 1 WEEK
Am lucky enough to get a couple of well paid gigs and a bonus from work. The plan is back on. I pride myself on not having spent the money on frivolous things like food, fuel and mittens.
LAUNCH PLUS 2 WEEKS
The money is now burning a hole in my pocket. The racist has gone quiet about the whole issue, and I'm trying to find a way to get rid of her. Decide to piss her off more often by bringing up contentious issues: Her part of the rent, the Wii, British policy on immigration.
LAUNCH PLUS 3 WEEKS
A friend tells me he has his Wii. An offer of being able to play on it is turned down due to gigs and a desire for me to savour my own Wii experience when I have my own. All mine. Mention the Wii plan being back on to the racist. She goes ballistic. Excellent.
LAUNCH PLUS 4 WEEKS
Have enormous row with the racist over, well, her being a nazi. This story is now immortalised in my Edinburgh show as revenge for her bigotry. Decide to break up with her as soon as she has paid her next rent instalment. Decide to do it the old fashioned way and actually tell her rather than just moving house one day while she's out.
LAUNCH PLUS 5 WEEKS
Big row. Mention the Wii whilst at dinner with my family and the racist and she goes completely mental. Sets up next week nicely. Rent week.
LAUNCH PLUS 6 WEEKS
The racist pays me her rent in cash. I whoop and holler, telling her where the money is going with barely disguised antagonostic glee. She begins to cry. I ask why, and through smeared mascara and angry tears she tells me that she's bought me a Wii from eBay as a gift. A token of her love. I feel a strange mixture of elation, guilt, excitement and regret. A day passes, and I realise that it was bad enough staying with the racist just to claim rent, let alone take her gift. I break up with her, awkwardly, and offer her money (over £100 more than list price) for the Wii and - most out of character for me - offer her the rent payment back. She accepts and I'm free.
I'm now single and better still, my Wii has been shipped.
MY WII ARRIVES (LAUNCH PLUS 7 WEEKS)
I balance the sensor on top of my TV and carefully set up the Wii. Obviously I don't read the instructions, but I take my time and lay out all the equipment. After all, in theory this machine has cost me £550. The expectation is immense as the lights on the Wiimote flash blue for the first time. I slide in Wii Sports. I create my Mii. I'm as excited as a boy can be. I start the game.
I'm underwhelmed.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 1 WEEK
I've borrowed, purchased or rented pretty much every game on the Wii and can't manage more than half an hour at a time on the blasted thing. Meanwhile, TV adverts start to make me dislike the machine. Clearly, this machine is for girls.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 1 MONTH
The Wii gathers dust as the Xbox 360 becomes the household favourite. I have a theory: I'm a serious video gamer. I have an arm full of tattoos and leathery thumbs to prove this. I do not want to play games by vaguely swooshing my arm around, nor do I have the friends to come round and do likewise as we all giggle in soft focus. I want games that I can play whilst lying down and feeling my arteries gain fur.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 6 MONTHS
I sell most of my games. Mario Galaxy holds my attention for slightly longer than normal. The arrival in a few months of Mario Kart is all that keeps me going. Feel slightly twattish for paying so over the odds for the godforsaken machine.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 12 MONTHS
I buy a PS3. The Wii gathers dust. I feel like a Jeremy Kyle-candidate family that has bought a new Rottweiler because their Pitbull wasn't vicious enough.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 18 MONTHS
I hear a woman at work mention that she is planning on losing weight by purchasing the soon to be released Wii Fit. She weighs around 20 stone. She does not own a Wii. I fail to see how some badly timed leaning is going to undo 35 years of pies. Resolve to sell the blasted Wii as more insufferable adverts hit our screens. Video games are not for families, all beaming and healthy. They're for losers like me, pale and drawn, malnourished and over-tired, obsessive and lonely vanguards of weirdo-dom.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 18 MONTHS and ONE DAY.
I sell the Wii plus all my games for £170. I am not sorry to see it go. Attempt to erase the entire episode from my mind by playing Super Mario World on the SNES non stop for 26 hours.
I see an article in Edge magazine about the upcoming Nintendo Wii. After loving the NES, SNES, N64 and Gamecube I presume that they can do no wrong, like some kind of video game Eric Cantona. Don't get me wrong, the Gamecube's marketing was their equivalent of leaping into the crowd at Selhurst Park to pummel some oik who had learned French in order to insult their family: You know that it's technically incorrect, but there's a big part of you that loves them for it. Resident Evil 4? That's a masterpiece. Pikmin? Quality. Any machine that has a version of Mario Kart? Sold. I start a fund ready for said machine.
2 MONTHS BEFORE LAUNCH
I start creating room in my lounge ready for the new machine. I'm still not entirely sure how big it will be, but I find it a place next to the PS2, Gamecube and Xbox 360. Sandwiched twixt subwoofer and DVD rack, the space is pregnant with expectation.
1 MONTH BEFORE LAUNCH
Funds are raised. Then girlfriend (jealous despot with rascist tendencies) starts dropping hints that another member fo the electronic family is possibly not the greatest of ideas. Already tired of her, this does not auger well. Resolve to end the relationship if she insists on pursuing this fallacy. Choose to ignore the need to pre-order a machine as I'd quite like the excitment of queuing for one.
2 WEEKS BEFORE LAUNCH
Disaster strikes. The catylytic converter on my car chooses to die, thus forcing my car to fail its MOT. In desperation, I try to bribe the mechanic to pass my car so I don't have to spend my hard-saved cash. My intention was to slip him £20 or so, but my ham-fisted attempt at winking at him comes across as deeply disturbing flirting in a dangerously heterosexual environment. I am forced to pay for repairs. The racist deals with this news in her usual subtle, caring way: Whooping, cheering and performing the macarena as I break down in tears. The relationship is certainly not long for this world.
1 WEEK BEFORE LAUNCH
All is lost as newspaper reports mention that every single available Wii will sell out on day one. I curse my luck and toy with the idea of spending my saved cash on something frivolous. The racist mentions a holiday, but I'm in no way planning on spending my time with her in another country. That would give her chance to demonstrate her Daily Mail-learned foreign languages: Merely shouting the phrase "Sausage, egg and chips" louder and slower each time until understood in the face of the nearest waiter.
LAUNCH
I watch live on Sky News as the doors open at HMV on Oxford Street and the nerds of London and beyond rush inside to claw at each other and fight (in the loosest sense) over the machines available. Think to myself about nerds: As a rule, the more intelligent people gravitate towards this way of life. Knowledge is power. Should some kind of evil force wish to wipe out all intelligence from a nation, merely stage the mock launch of a mythical video game system (lets call it the Unicorn) and set the countdown clock in Game to a nuclear bomb. HMV that night will have smelled like every branch of Game does around the nation: Of sweat, celibacy and despair.
LAUNCH PLUS 1 WEEK
Am lucky enough to get a couple of well paid gigs and a bonus from work. The plan is back on. I pride myself on not having spent the money on frivolous things like food, fuel and mittens.
LAUNCH PLUS 2 WEEKS
The money is now burning a hole in my pocket. The racist has gone quiet about the whole issue, and I'm trying to find a way to get rid of her. Decide to piss her off more often by bringing up contentious issues: Her part of the rent, the Wii, British policy on immigration.
LAUNCH PLUS 3 WEEKS
A friend tells me he has his Wii. An offer of being able to play on it is turned down due to gigs and a desire for me to savour my own Wii experience when I have my own. All mine. Mention the Wii plan being back on to the racist. She goes ballistic. Excellent.
LAUNCH PLUS 4 WEEKS
Have enormous row with the racist over, well, her being a nazi. This story is now immortalised in my Edinburgh show as revenge for her bigotry. Decide to break up with her as soon as she has paid her next rent instalment. Decide to do it the old fashioned way and actually tell her rather than just moving house one day while she's out.
LAUNCH PLUS 5 WEEKS
Big row. Mention the Wii whilst at dinner with my family and the racist and she goes completely mental. Sets up next week nicely. Rent week.
LAUNCH PLUS 6 WEEKS
The racist pays me her rent in cash. I whoop and holler, telling her where the money is going with barely disguised antagonostic glee. She begins to cry. I ask why, and through smeared mascara and angry tears she tells me that she's bought me a Wii from eBay as a gift. A token of her love. I feel a strange mixture of elation, guilt, excitement and regret. A day passes, and I realise that it was bad enough staying with the racist just to claim rent, let alone take her gift. I break up with her, awkwardly, and offer her money (over £100 more than list price) for the Wii and - most out of character for me - offer her the rent payment back. She accepts and I'm free.
I'm now single and better still, my Wii has been shipped.
MY WII ARRIVES (LAUNCH PLUS 7 WEEKS)
I balance the sensor on top of my TV and carefully set up the Wii. Obviously I don't read the instructions, but I take my time and lay out all the equipment. After all, in theory this machine has cost me £550. The expectation is immense as the lights on the Wiimote flash blue for the first time. I slide in Wii Sports. I create my Mii. I'm as excited as a boy can be. I start the game.
I'm underwhelmed.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 1 WEEK
I've borrowed, purchased or rented pretty much every game on the Wii and can't manage more than half an hour at a time on the blasted thing. Meanwhile, TV adverts start to make me dislike the machine. Clearly, this machine is for girls.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 1 MONTH
The Wii gathers dust as the Xbox 360 becomes the household favourite. I have a theory: I'm a serious video gamer. I have an arm full of tattoos and leathery thumbs to prove this. I do not want to play games by vaguely swooshing my arm around, nor do I have the friends to come round and do likewise as we all giggle in soft focus. I want games that I can play whilst lying down and feeling my arteries gain fur.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 6 MONTHS
I sell most of my games. Mario Galaxy holds my attention for slightly longer than normal. The arrival in a few months of Mario Kart is all that keeps me going. Feel slightly twattish for paying so over the odds for the godforsaken machine.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 12 MONTHS
I buy a PS3. The Wii gathers dust. I feel like a Jeremy Kyle-candidate family that has bought a new Rottweiler because their Pitbull wasn't vicious enough.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 18 MONTHS
I hear a woman at work mention that she is planning on losing weight by purchasing the soon to be released Wii Fit. She weighs around 20 stone. She does not own a Wii. I fail to see how some badly timed leaning is going to undo 35 years of pies. Resolve to sell the blasted Wii as more insufferable adverts hit our screens. Video games are not for families, all beaming and healthy. They're for losers like me, pale and drawn, malnourished and over-tired, obsessive and lonely vanguards of weirdo-dom.
WII ARRIVAL PLUS 18 MONTHS and ONE DAY.
I sell the Wii plus all my games for £170. I am not sorry to see it go. Attempt to erase the entire episode from my mind by playing Super Mario World on the SNES non stop for 26 hours.
Tuesday 17 March 2009
6: Cocaine
Since the age of 20 I've been completely teetotal. I used to try and claim that I was straight-edge because of my strict no drinking, no smoking and no drugs policy - but it seems the straight-edge police from California get a little bit pissy if you fancy a shandy on a summer day, or you take painkillers when you hurt your back slipping on a broken toilet seat. It happens, ok?
I'm teetotal out of choice, but that choice is questioned on a daily basis. Friends will constantly try and encourage me to drink, like the fact that I choose to not imbibe alcohol makes me some kind of untrustworthy bastard. They all cast unapproving glances at me drinking coke as they drink pints; at me matching their white russians with a McDonalds milkshake. I miss smoking a bit although it's been quite some time now. If my daughter ever asks me whether smoking is bad my genuine answer will be as follows:
"It'll kill you. But it makes you look really, really cool."
Because it does, you can't deny that. I always want to have my publicity shots done with me smoking, aping my heroes: Bill Hicks, Mark Lanegan, Dot Cotton.
Drugs are a different issue. People don't tend to offer me them, they merely believe I'm on them. Or that I can provide them, from my mythical suitcase full of powders and pills that I keep in a secret compartment in the boot of my car, covered by tatty carpet and a Tesco shopping bag. If I'd have had a pound for every time I've been asked to provide drugs just because people presume I have an enormous stash of them... then, well... hang on. I'd probably have made more money if I'd have actually started selling drugs. Although I did once sell some Vim to a lad I didn't like at university and told him it was cocaine. I think he lived.
I must stress that in the same way that I'm far from anti alcohol or tobacco - without drunk people I would be considerably less funny, and without the smell of smoke gig venues now smell of boys and beer - I'm really not anti drugs. Your body, you can do what you want with it. Without the influence of narcotics the world of music and film would be without so much genius. And admittedly, without non-talented cocks like Pete Doherty. I'm a big believer in everyone trying out whatever they can in life. If your buzz comes from shoving a powder up your nose then fine, that's ok with me. After all, I'm cripplingly addicted to going up onstage to get my buzz.
My issues with cocaine are twofold - and that's without getting into the politics of how it gets to us, whose pockets it is lining and the masses of people who are killed in the wars over who controls it. My gripes may seem slightly less important.
Firstly, I despise the press attitude towards cocaine. The biggest pusher of the stuff in this country are lads mags, not some dude called Darren in a leather jacket in the corner of your local. You could read about a rockstar doing lines off the backs of sweaty whores during recording of a legendary album and you still read about the music. You view him as a quirky celebrity doing something out of your reach. It's when magazines like FHM, Maxim, Vice and so on (the latter being particularly bad about this) start talking about coke prices, where to get the best shit and so on. Because that's not providing a service to anyone. That's merely letting impressionable idiots know about something that people have been sampling and not harping on about for decades now, and making something break the chav barrier.
Breaking the chav barrier is what happens when something that is perceived as remotely cool is ruined by attention from Britain's ruling underclass. For example - Lyle and Scott knitwear, Fred Perry shirts, everything Burberry have ever made - the list is fairly endless. It used to be so much simpler: Cocaine was enjoyed by rockstars and the wealthy. Now Gaz, Daz and Baz can cap off a good week of driving a white van with a gram of coke and live the high life. This is all the fault of the press reporting on the drug in such a way - that's why the drug is getting more prevalent.
I wouldn't have an issue with more people than ever doing what is (in theory) an non-addictive drug if it wasn't for people constantly harping on about it. That's my second point and the main bone of contention. It's a drug that makes you mildly more sociable, chatty and confident. I'm fine with that - like I said before, I do comedy to get my buzz.
If you're drinking a beer I have no interest in what it cost you, where you got it, how many you can consume in a day, what the name was of the person who sold it you and so on. Just because something is in powdered form, then cut with baking soda by one dealer, then with icing sugar by another, then with shake and vac by another, then sold at an overpriced rate by someone who doesn't fully understand inflation and the global economic dive, then you shared a line with someone you just met in a dingy toilet and you considered it glamorous and classy... it doesn't make it any more interesting.
The one saving grace of cocaine is that it hurt members of Status Quo when they were showering, and helped me learn what a septum was.
And who the fuck Daniella Westbrook is.
I'm teetotal out of choice, but that choice is questioned on a daily basis. Friends will constantly try and encourage me to drink, like the fact that I choose to not imbibe alcohol makes me some kind of untrustworthy bastard. They all cast unapproving glances at me drinking coke as they drink pints; at me matching their white russians with a McDonalds milkshake. I miss smoking a bit although it's been quite some time now. If my daughter ever asks me whether smoking is bad my genuine answer will be as follows:
"It'll kill you. But it makes you look really, really cool."
Because it does, you can't deny that. I always want to have my publicity shots done with me smoking, aping my heroes: Bill Hicks, Mark Lanegan, Dot Cotton.
Drugs are a different issue. People don't tend to offer me them, they merely believe I'm on them. Or that I can provide them, from my mythical suitcase full of powders and pills that I keep in a secret compartment in the boot of my car, covered by tatty carpet and a Tesco shopping bag. If I'd have had a pound for every time I've been asked to provide drugs just because people presume I have an enormous stash of them... then, well... hang on. I'd probably have made more money if I'd have actually started selling drugs. Although I did once sell some Vim to a lad I didn't like at university and told him it was cocaine. I think he lived.
I must stress that in the same way that I'm far from anti alcohol or tobacco - without drunk people I would be considerably less funny, and without the smell of smoke gig venues now smell of boys and beer - I'm really not anti drugs. Your body, you can do what you want with it. Without the influence of narcotics the world of music and film would be without so much genius. And admittedly, without non-talented cocks like Pete Doherty. I'm a big believer in everyone trying out whatever they can in life. If your buzz comes from shoving a powder up your nose then fine, that's ok with me. After all, I'm cripplingly addicted to going up onstage to get my buzz.
My issues with cocaine are twofold - and that's without getting into the politics of how it gets to us, whose pockets it is lining and the masses of people who are killed in the wars over who controls it. My gripes may seem slightly less important.
Firstly, I despise the press attitude towards cocaine. The biggest pusher of the stuff in this country are lads mags, not some dude called Darren in a leather jacket in the corner of your local. You could read about a rockstar doing lines off the backs of sweaty whores during recording of a legendary album and you still read about the music. You view him as a quirky celebrity doing something out of your reach. It's when magazines like FHM, Maxim, Vice and so on (the latter being particularly bad about this) start talking about coke prices, where to get the best shit and so on. Because that's not providing a service to anyone. That's merely letting impressionable idiots know about something that people have been sampling and not harping on about for decades now, and making something break the chav barrier.
Breaking the chav barrier is what happens when something that is perceived as remotely cool is ruined by attention from Britain's ruling underclass. For example - Lyle and Scott knitwear, Fred Perry shirts, everything Burberry have ever made - the list is fairly endless. It used to be so much simpler: Cocaine was enjoyed by rockstars and the wealthy. Now Gaz, Daz and Baz can cap off a good week of driving a white van with a gram of coke and live the high life. This is all the fault of the press reporting on the drug in such a way - that's why the drug is getting more prevalent.
I wouldn't have an issue with more people than ever doing what is (in theory) an non-addictive drug if it wasn't for people constantly harping on about it. That's my second point and the main bone of contention. It's a drug that makes you mildly more sociable, chatty and confident. I'm fine with that - like I said before, I do comedy to get my buzz.
If you're drinking a beer I have no interest in what it cost you, where you got it, how many you can consume in a day, what the name was of the person who sold it you and so on. Just because something is in powdered form, then cut with baking soda by one dealer, then with icing sugar by another, then with shake and vac by another, then sold at an overpriced rate by someone who doesn't fully understand inflation and the global economic dive, then you shared a line with someone you just met in a dingy toilet and you considered it glamorous and classy... it doesn't make it any more interesting.
The one saving grace of cocaine is that it hurt members of Status Quo when they were showering, and helped me learn what a septum was.
And who the fuck Daniella Westbrook is.
Monday 16 March 2009
5: Improper use of the word "random"
I was always taught at university that it was bad form to begin an essay with a dictionary definition. Well, I think that's what they said. I never really listened that much, to be honest. But I'm all about smashing conventions man, you know, like the punk rock auteurs of our past. SMASH IT! SMASH IT ALL DOWN! HANG THIS MOTHERFUCKING BLOG IN THE TATE MODERN!
Yeah.
Random is defined (I could have made this more wanky by quoting what dictionary I took this from and listing it in the bibliography. Have you ever seen someone do that? I have. Yeah, it was me. "Ooh, what wider reading did he do? A fucking dictionary?") as "made or occurring without a definite aim, reason or pattern".
I once went on a date with a girl who described herself as "well random". I must stress that she described herself in that way AFTER the date had begun, otherwise I would not have attended at all - no matter how desperate or lonely I may have been. And I won't lie, I have been both of those things in the past. Especially as a teenager, where I would have probably been willing to sleep with a bristle-faced dinner lady in a caravan in Mablethorpe.
It's worrying enough that she prefaced using the word that stokes my ire so much with the word "well". So, let us overlook the fact that she chose the wrong word to describe herself. Even if she did think she was truly "random", it's not a word that needs quantifying. Random is random is random. You cannot be any more or less random.
And don't get me started on the lottery. It is not randomly generated. If it was then the same number could come out twice in a draw, so it's not random in the slightest. Well, it is almost random. But it's not slightly random - it strives to be random and just falls short.
So yeah, she rocks up for our date in a Vauxhall Corsa (one of the most popular cars in the land), she's a quite pretty 26 year old (quite an average age), she's dressed in clothes bought from All Saints (a major high street brand these days) and her shoes are from Office (ditto. I asked). She worked in an office (not exactly the most bizarre career path) and liked to drink Magners - one of the most beloved of all the boozes.
What I'm saying here is that she wasn't exactly different, controversial, bizarre or however you would choose to describe someone a bit odd. She was normal. Perfectly nice, but normal. No-one ever describes themselves as normal. Ever. Even though most of us are perfectly normal - and there is no shame in that. None at all. If anything, I would enjoy the honesty. We're a normal country full of pleasant normal folk. Is that such a crime?
The date didn't go well, of course. Because I have an inbuilt be-a-dickhead-if-you-think-you-have-a-point device buzzing away in my brain. She casually said that she was "well random" and my tone changed, my smile dropped and I immediately quizzed her on this. A more pleasant human being would just let these slide, but as you can tell from my daily rants I care not for the opinion of others and am spurred on by the dead ghost of a 1970s trade union gobshite that has possessed my soul. I can't leave things be, ever scratching at the surface of arguments that don't need to happen until something or someone is bleeding. Metaphorically.
I quizzed her:
ME: Why are you "well random"?
HER: Well, you know. Me and all my mates, we're all random.
ME: So, you didn't choose your friends? If you go out for a drink then you don't know who is going to show up and it could be anyone from the billions of people walking the face of the Earth?
HER: (Laughing nervously) Er, no. We're just all, you know...
ME: So, you have the same friends each time...
HER: Yes...
ME: But they're completely random people in terms of their character?
HER: Er...
ME: So if I was to check one of their passports, for example, they would always have the same name but they could turn up for a night out in one of a million different forms? So your friend Sarah, for example, could turn up one time as a twentysomething...
HER: I've got a friend called Sarah!
ME: ... and the next time she could be a bright pink Llama? And the next a bowl of Mulligatawny Soup?
HER: That's not really what I meant... we're just, you know...
ME: (Shouting) What? Different? Zany? Wacky? Is that it? Hmm? You're not random. Stop using the word. You are not a 21 year old student. STOP IT! STOP IT! (I'm weeping by now) STOP IT!
She went then.
Simple rule of thumb. If someone described themselves as "random", there is a fair chance that they are as regular and normal as a person can be. And this isn't a sin. Bad English should be, but that isn't either. More's the pity. The same applies for zany, wacky, outgoing, different, alternative - we're who we are, don't try and sum yourself up in one word. Let us try to not live in text messages where we can't use more than 160 characters to describe ourselves.
I, Jim Smallman, am not random. I'm a short tempered, badly-coiffeured stand up comedian without the slightest hint of wackiness opr zaniness. There is literally nothing to set me apart from anyone else in the world, because we're all essentially the same mix of blood, guts, water and fudge. I cheerfully admit my enslavement to the world of normality, the dirty words "normal" and "regular".
See, no-one admits that, ever.
I'm well random.
Yeah.
Random is defined (I could have made this more wanky by quoting what dictionary I took this from and listing it in the bibliography. Have you ever seen someone do that? I have. Yeah, it was me. "Ooh, what wider reading did he do? A fucking dictionary?") as "made or occurring without a definite aim, reason or pattern".
I once went on a date with a girl who described herself as "well random". I must stress that she described herself in that way AFTER the date had begun, otherwise I would not have attended at all - no matter how desperate or lonely I may have been. And I won't lie, I have been both of those things in the past. Especially as a teenager, where I would have probably been willing to sleep with a bristle-faced dinner lady in a caravan in Mablethorpe.
It's worrying enough that she prefaced using the word that stokes my ire so much with the word "well". So, let us overlook the fact that she chose the wrong word to describe herself. Even if she did think she was truly "random", it's not a word that needs quantifying. Random is random is random. You cannot be any more or less random.
And don't get me started on the lottery. It is not randomly generated. If it was then the same number could come out twice in a draw, so it's not random in the slightest. Well, it is almost random. But it's not slightly random - it strives to be random and just falls short.
So yeah, she rocks up for our date in a Vauxhall Corsa (one of the most popular cars in the land), she's a quite pretty 26 year old (quite an average age), she's dressed in clothes bought from All Saints (a major high street brand these days) and her shoes are from Office (ditto. I asked). She worked in an office (not exactly the most bizarre career path) and liked to drink Magners - one of the most beloved of all the boozes.
What I'm saying here is that she wasn't exactly different, controversial, bizarre or however you would choose to describe someone a bit odd. She was normal. Perfectly nice, but normal. No-one ever describes themselves as normal. Ever. Even though most of us are perfectly normal - and there is no shame in that. None at all. If anything, I would enjoy the honesty. We're a normal country full of pleasant normal folk. Is that such a crime?
The date didn't go well, of course. Because I have an inbuilt be-a-dickhead-if-you-think-you-have-a-point device buzzing away in my brain. She casually said that she was "well random" and my tone changed, my smile dropped and I immediately quizzed her on this. A more pleasant human being would just let these slide, but as you can tell from my daily rants I care not for the opinion of others and am spurred on by the dead ghost of a 1970s trade union gobshite that has possessed my soul. I can't leave things be, ever scratching at the surface of arguments that don't need to happen until something or someone is bleeding. Metaphorically.
I quizzed her:
ME: Why are you "well random"?
HER: Well, you know. Me and all my mates, we're all random.
ME: So, you didn't choose your friends? If you go out for a drink then you don't know who is going to show up and it could be anyone from the billions of people walking the face of the Earth?
HER: (Laughing nervously) Er, no. We're just all, you know...
ME: So, you have the same friends each time...
HER: Yes...
ME: But they're completely random people in terms of their character?
HER: Er...
ME: So if I was to check one of their passports, for example, they would always have the same name but they could turn up for a night out in one of a million different forms? So your friend Sarah, for example, could turn up one time as a twentysomething...
HER: I've got a friend called Sarah!
ME: ... and the next time she could be a bright pink Llama? And the next a bowl of Mulligatawny Soup?
HER: That's not really what I meant... we're just, you know...
ME: (Shouting) What? Different? Zany? Wacky? Is that it? Hmm? You're not random. Stop using the word. You are not a 21 year old student. STOP IT! STOP IT! (I'm weeping by now) STOP IT!
She went then.
Simple rule of thumb. If someone described themselves as "random", there is a fair chance that they are as regular and normal as a person can be. And this isn't a sin. Bad English should be, but that isn't either. More's the pity. The same applies for zany, wacky, outgoing, different, alternative - we're who we are, don't try and sum yourself up in one word. Let us try to not live in text messages where we can't use more than 160 characters to describe ourselves.
I, Jim Smallman, am not random. I'm a short tempered, badly-coiffeured stand up comedian without the slightest hint of wackiness opr zaniness. There is literally nothing to set me apart from anyone else in the world, because we're all essentially the same mix of blood, guts, water and fudge. I cheerfully admit my enslavement to the world of normality, the dirty words "normal" and "regular".
See, no-one admits that, ever.
I'm well random.
Sunday 15 March 2009
4: Creosote
Spring is finally here. Every morning I curse the fact that light creeps through my blinds and that I don't have curtains, before remembering that I'm meant to - as a supposed regular human being - be excited at the oncoming of spring. Little lambs gambolling around buttercup-flecked fields, adorable puppies frolicking in waterfalls, baby deer being harvested for their meat for the rich and uncaring. It's all good.
Yesterday I wore my sunglasses for the first time this year. Admittedly, quite a lot of that was to do with the fact that I'd only had a few hours sleep and my eyes resembled the hastily scratched crosses etched into cheap bullets in a war torn part of the world - but it was remotely pleasant to look like a rockstar in deepest Leicestershire. The part I enjoyed about the onset of brightness was wandering around Leicester city centre with my music on as loud as possible, staring at the tops of buildings and noticing things that it seems like I've never noticed before. Of course, I have noticed all of these things before - it's just that winter has a way of greying out the tops of buildings, shrouding them in a metaphoric fog as the rain, sleet and snow makes everyone keep their heads down and scurry from place to place like robotic mice.
It'll be Easter soon, an event which has something to do with Jesus being a chocoholic and the disciples being reincarnated as Creme Eggs. As I understand it, anyway. Which means the first Bank Holidays of the year and a chance for people to feel remotely motivated to get themselves along to a garden centre or a DIY place and start to spruce their place up.
I am not one of these people.
DIY around the home is a neccessity. If something breaks, fix it. I can understand that. Gardening is a waste of time - but that's another rant. DIY outside the home is the most pointless exercise in the existence of humanity. Allow me to explain.
If you go to Homebase on a bank holiday and buy a fence, chances are you won't need one. I'm willing to bet that your current fence didn't need replacing. If it did because there was some kind of hurricane in your part of Glamorgan (or wherever you are, I merely like the name "Glamorgan") then I'll allow that - but note what colour your new wooden fence is.
It's wood coloured.
I'm constantly perplexed by the need for people to paint wood in another wooden colour. And better yet, paint it with something that fades after a year so you need to repaint it. Creosote is godforsaken stuff that is clearly deliberately pointless and addictive. It fades, so you must buy more. It smells funny, polluting the air from March to June in every part of the UK (you'll note that creosote isn't anywhere near as popular in the USA, for example) but maybe there's something in the smell. It's probably all a part of a global conspiracy led by the Reptilian hordes. (This theory copyright David Icke, 2009).
Don't even get me started on fucking decking. That stuff is just quadrupling the sadolin / ronseal grasp on the global woodstain economy.
And that stuff is toxic, too. It's carcinogenic, causes breathing difficulties, is poisonous and caustic. It's not exactly in tune with the environmental yin and yang, the essence of spring and rebirth that it's meant to represent. I don't care how few coats it takes to slather your fence in the godforsaken stuff, or how rapidly it dries to a rich woody colour. All I know is that if your pour it into your eyes, it'll probably cause severe burning and potential blindness. And how do I know this? Easy.
It does exactly what it says on the tin.
Yesterday I wore my sunglasses for the first time this year. Admittedly, quite a lot of that was to do with the fact that I'd only had a few hours sleep and my eyes resembled the hastily scratched crosses etched into cheap bullets in a war torn part of the world - but it was remotely pleasant to look like a rockstar in deepest Leicestershire. The part I enjoyed about the onset of brightness was wandering around Leicester city centre with my music on as loud as possible, staring at the tops of buildings and noticing things that it seems like I've never noticed before. Of course, I have noticed all of these things before - it's just that winter has a way of greying out the tops of buildings, shrouding them in a metaphoric fog as the rain, sleet and snow makes everyone keep their heads down and scurry from place to place like robotic mice.
It'll be Easter soon, an event which has something to do with Jesus being a chocoholic and the disciples being reincarnated as Creme Eggs. As I understand it, anyway. Which means the first Bank Holidays of the year and a chance for people to feel remotely motivated to get themselves along to a garden centre or a DIY place and start to spruce their place up.
I am not one of these people.
DIY around the home is a neccessity. If something breaks, fix it. I can understand that. Gardening is a waste of time - but that's another rant. DIY outside the home is the most pointless exercise in the existence of humanity. Allow me to explain.
If you go to Homebase on a bank holiday and buy a fence, chances are you won't need one. I'm willing to bet that your current fence didn't need replacing. If it did because there was some kind of hurricane in your part of Glamorgan (or wherever you are, I merely like the name "Glamorgan") then I'll allow that - but note what colour your new wooden fence is.
It's wood coloured.
I'm constantly perplexed by the need for people to paint wood in another wooden colour. And better yet, paint it with something that fades after a year so you need to repaint it. Creosote is godforsaken stuff that is clearly deliberately pointless and addictive. It fades, so you must buy more. It smells funny, polluting the air from March to June in every part of the UK (you'll note that creosote isn't anywhere near as popular in the USA, for example) but maybe there's something in the smell. It's probably all a part of a global conspiracy led by the Reptilian hordes. (This theory copyright David Icke, 2009).
Don't even get me started on fucking decking. That stuff is just quadrupling the sadolin / ronseal grasp on the global woodstain economy.
And that stuff is toxic, too. It's carcinogenic, causes breathing difficulties, is poisonous and caustic. It's not exactly in tune with the environmental yin and yang, the essence of spring and rebirth that it's meant to represent. I don't care how few coats it takes to slather your fence in the godforsaken stuff, or how rapidly it dries to a rich woody colour. All I know is that if your pour it into your eyes, it'll probably cause severe burning and potential blindness. And how do I know this? Easy.
It does exactly what it says on the tin.
Wednesday 11 March 2009
3: Manufactured pop music (with the exception of Girls Aloud)
Music is mankind's greatest artistic achievement. I may love comedy, graffiti, video games, films and brightly coloured trainers but nothing affects my mood more than music. In my 30 years on the planet music has evolved tremendously - even more so if you look back earlier.
Composers would sit in isolation for months, even years, to bring their ideas to reality. Musical visionaries in the twentieth century were brave enough to try new things, to push boundaries: Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, James Brown, The Clash, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, The Beastie Boys, Boards of Canada, Radiohead, Burial - you could probably look through your iTunes and pull out another dozen names of geniuses to add to my ramshackle little list.
I'm fairly sure that you would not include Five, A1, 911, S-Club 7, S-Club Juniors, Gareth Gates, in fact any of the X-Factor / Pop Idol / Fame Academy solo winners or the godforsaken Spice Girls in your list. Unless someone had taken your brain in the night and replaced it with a chewed tennis ball and some mandarin jelly.
The Monkees started the manufactured pop music phenomenon, but they were still half decent. They had a funny TV programme, they had remotely catchy pop tunes - and in the 1960's, that's all you had to do. I used to write a column for an American website about music and I once described The Beatles as the most overrated band in the history of the universe - maybe a little harsh, but their early output was no more cerebral than the Monkees. Just because you have guitars and such it doesn't mean you're not a boy band.
COUGH Busted COUGH McFly COUGH.
I could accept it if our chart music output these days was Monkee-esque. But it isn't. It's an obvious point to make that our charts are ruled by whoever wins the latest reality show - but that's not what is to blame for the homogenisation of the greatest of all the art forms. I'll tell you what is.
We've got no imagination.
If you turned up at a record label now and had somehow recorded the British equivalent of Captain Beefheart in a dilapidated shack in Wales, the record label may be interested in your potential. But they'd take you to Top Man and buy you a pair of skinny jeans first, then some pointy shoes and a trenchcoat. Then they'd overproduce and water your music down until somehow your hours of genius sounded like the fucking Kooks. Again, this isn't the fault of the record labels - it's all down to us. And I'm just as bad as everyone else.
When I was a student I would spend all of my time and money on two things: Video games and music. The video games I would buy would be Japanese imports, and I would spend hours researching them and seeking them out. Music was a similar thing: I would read magazines, books, websites - all in a quest to discover something new, something exciting. Just as I no longer buy my games from the Far East, I no longer put my effort into looking for music. Because I'm lazy. I can put MTV2 on and sometimes find something I like, or I can click through iTunes and find something vaguely interesting and download it. But I don't put the effort in anymore. And no-one does. X-Factor winners dominate the chart because we let them and we're too lazy to stage a revolution. I'd love to say that we're about to have another 1976 style musical overhaul but we're not.
In the same way that it's easy to buy fast food, it's easy for teenagers to buy manufactured music. Some of it is tolerable - you'll note from my disclaimer for this little rant that Girls Aloud are excluded. This is not because I'm an FHM reader who values them merely on how they look. I mean, they're pleasant enough - if a little too WAG-esque. I can't really tell them apart, if I'm honest. My personal favourite is Nicola, and the howls of derision that this brings when I tell people so merely underlines my point about us being an unimaginitive society. She IS the prettiest, with porcelain skin and the most striking looks - but it's the easy and simple thing to do to fancy one of the blonde ones and be done with it. Or that racist one.
My positive attitude towards Girls Aloud comes because their music isn't bad. It's pop, yes - but inoffensive and almost subversive because it's actually remotely interesting. Despite the fact that "Sounds of the Underground" made my ex-wife sick when she was pregnant with our daughter (what can I say, little Amelia has good taste - her favourite songs are by MIA, Kings of Leon and Animal Collective), songs like "Love Machine" and "Biology" actually crackle with personality.
No, I'm not going insane.
They can even get away with lyrics like "I don't speak French / So I let the funky music do the talking". Because they're cheeky, the musical equvalent of a saucy 1920's postcard. The Saturdays can try and take their mantle but, cute short-haired singer aside, they have nothing visually to offer and certainly nothing at all musically. They're merely the Mr Pibb to the Girls Aloud's Dr Pepper. I would rather that Girls Aloud have continued success rather than any of the identikit Indie band out there with their lookalike £75 Toni and Guy haircuts.
I'd love to offer a solution for this problem with our music industry. But I can't. I am merely one man, and a slightly tired one at that. For all my pontificating I'm not going to make you change your music taste. And I would rather people liked SOME type of music than nothing at all. But just consider it next time you buy a CD or a download. Are you promoting the rise of a generic, own-brand music industry? Or did you purchase something interesting, vibrant, different, creative?
And if you think you're helping by buying Duffy records, you're not. She sings like a fucking mallard.
Composers would sit in isolation for months, even years, to bring their ideas to reality. Musical visionaries in the twentieth century were brave enough to try new things, to push boundaries: Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash, James Brown, The Clash, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain, The Beastie Boys, Boards of Canada, Radiohead, Burial - you could probably look through your iTunes and pull out another dozen names of geniuses to add to my ramshackle little list.
I'm fairly sure that you would not include Five, A1, 911, S-Club 7, S-Club Juniors, Gareth Gates, in fact any of the X-Factor / Pop Idol / Fame Academy solo winners or the godforsaken Spice Girls in your list. Unless someone had taken your brain in the night and replaced it with a chewed tennis ball and some mandarin jelly.
The Monkees started the manufactured pop music phenomenon, but they were still half decent. They had a funny TV programme, they had remotely catchy pop tunes - and in the 1960's, that's all you had to do. I used to write a column for an American website about music and I once described The Beatles as the most overrated band in the history of the universe - maybe a little harsh, but their early output was no more cerebral than the Monkees. Just because you have guitars and such it doesn't mean you're not a boy band.
COUGH Busted COUGH McFly COUGH.
I could accept it if our chart music output these days was Monkee-esque. But it isn't. It's an obvious point to make that our charts are ruled by whoever wins the latest reality show - but that's not what is to blame for the homogenisation of the greatest of all the art forms. I'll tell you what is.
We've got no imagination.
If you turned up at a record label now and had somehow recorded the British equivalent of Captain Beefheart in a dilapidated shack in Wales, the record label may be interested in your potential. But they'd take you to Top Man and buy you a pair of skinny jeans first, then some pointy shoes and a trenchcoat. Then they'd overproduce and water your music down until somehow your hours of genius sounded like the fucking Kooks. Again, this isn't the fault of the record labels - it's all down to us. And I'm just as bad as everyone else.
When I was a student I would spend all of my time and money on two things: Video games and music. The video games I would buy would be Japanese imports, and I would spend hours researching them and seeking them out. Music was a similar thing: I would read magazines, books, websites - all in a quest to discover something new, something exciting. Just as I no longer buy my games from the Far East, I no longer put my effort into looking for music. Because I'm lazy. I can put MTV2 on and sometimes find something I like, or I can click through iTunes and find something vaguely interesting and download it. But I don't put the effort in anymore. And no-one does. X-Factor winners dominate the chart because we let them and we're too lazy to stage a revolution. I'd love to say that we're about to have another 1976 style musical overhaul but we're not.
In the same way that it's easy to buy fast food, it's easy for teenagers to buy manufactured music. Some of it is tolerable - you'll note from my disclaimer for this little rant that Girls Aloud are excluded. This is not because I'm an FHM reader who values them merely on how they look. I mean, they're pleasant enough - if a little too WAG-esque. I can't really tell them apart, if I'm honest. My personal favourite is Nicola, and the howls of derision that this brings when I tell people so merely underlines my point about us being an unimaginitive society. She IS the prettiest, with porcelain skin and the most striking looks - but it's the easy and simple thing to do to fancy one of the blonde ones and be done with it. Or that racist one.
My positive attitude towards Girls Aloud comes because their music isn't bad. It's pop, yes - but inoffensive and almost subversive because it's actually remotely interesting. Despite the fact that "Sounds of the Underground" made my ex-wife sick when she was pregnant with our daughter (what can I say, little Amelia has good taste - her favourite songs are by MIA, Kings of Leon and Animal Collective), songs like "Love Machine" and "Biology" actually crackle with personality.
No, I'm not going insane.
They can even get away with lyrics like "I don't speak French / So I let the funky music do the talking". Because they're cheeky, the musical equvalent of a saucy 1920's postcard. The Saturdays can try and take their mantle but, cute short-haired singer aside, they have nothing visually to offer and certainly nothing at all musically. They're merely the Mr Pibb to the Girls Aloud's Dr Pepper. I would rather that Girls Aloud have continued success rather than any of the identikit Indie band out there with their lookalike £75 Toni and Guy haircuts.
I'd love to offer a solution for this problem with our music industry. But I can't. I am merely one man, and a slightly tired one at that. For all my pontificating I'm not going to make you change your music taste. And I would rather people liked SOME type of music than nothing at all. But just consider it next time you buy a CD or a download. Are you promoting the rise of a generic, own-brand music industry? Or did you purchase something interesting, vibrant, different, creative?
And if you think you're helping by buying Duffy records, you're not. She sings like a fucking mallard.
Tuesday 10 March 2009
2: Roast Lamb
The Sunday roast is a British tradition. Ask any be-backpacked traveller (that's a convenient term for "middle class and on holiday for three months") in the deepest darkest jungles of Cambodia what they miss most about Britain and they'll probably answer that they miss sitting down with their nearest and dearest for prime roasted meats, potatoes and vegetables, shrouded in rich gravy and topped off with Yorkshire puddings the size of Chichester.
My family is arguably odder than most; but not for any terrible reason, I love them all dearly. It's quite rare now that my immediate family unit (Parents and sister) sit around for dinner, just the four of us - both me and Liz having flown the proverbial nest and spawned children over the last decade. And it's a shame, because I think we're the perfect eccentric family. We'll leave me out of the descriptions, because I'll presume that you know I'm daft... the constant stream of hate-filled blogs pays testimony to that fact. My sister is the butt for the least of my jokes onstage, the hardest working person I know, a brilliant mum, sister and daughter and someone who you can have no comeback to, regardless of the base insults she casually tosses in my direction. A typical exchange between us would go like this:
ME: Hello, Liz.
LIZ: You look like a twat in those trainers.
ME: You have a point. I'm going over there to think about the many mistakes I've made.
My Dad is known to most of the people who know me through comedy as the wonderfully robust gentleman who sometimes drives me to gigs for no reason other than I'm doing OK out of comedy and I was always shit at football as a kid. He only wears black, not because he's the world's oldest and chunkiest goth, but because it's all he likes. He's got a wardrobe like a cut-price Don Simpson (I held back from the more obvious Johnny Cash reference there) - swing the door open and there are reams of black shirts and black jeans from K-Mart, and my parent's garage is full of bottles of Dreft Dark, purchased in the fear that one day it'll be discontinued and my Dad will no longer be the enigmatic man in black, more the slightly peeved man in Charcoal.
My mum is a wonderful woman. She's an awesome influence on my life, and the bravest woman in the universe. She's also responsible for quite a lot of my material, through sheer daftness. Why, just the other day she was talking to people over dinner and she said the following:
"Of course, young people don't go courting these days, do they? What do they call it now? Trapping?"
The fact that she has such a great sense of humour regarding my material is reflected in the end of my hour long show where I tell what I think is quite a touching story about her attending one of my gigs after getting the all clear from her cancer treatment. Steve Bennett called it a "pathos tinged climax", which meant I had to explain what that meant to my family. My mother thought it was a Greek Island, my sister one of the Muskahounds. I tried telling her that they were based on the Muskateers but I chickened out. I like the idea that Dogtanian was the original story, it was better.
On the rare occassions we get together for Sunday Lunch it is always a jovial, enjoyable and memorable affair. But I can guarantee that one thing will happen. I will enter the house and ask what we're having for lunch. My father will inevitably answer "Roast Lamb" with a smile on his face. He does this for a reason.
If you rank Roast Lamb as the king of all Roasts then you are a filthy liar. My order of roast preference goes like this - and therefore is completely reflective of society as a whole, because I'm a 30 year old male.
1: Roast Beef
2: Roast Chicken
3: Roast Turkey
4: Roast Pork (not a fan, but I appreciate it has a place)
5: Roast Duck
6: Roast Pheasant
7: Roast Ostrich
8: Roast Kangaroo
9: Roast Centipede
10: Roast Sea Slug
11: Roast Lemur
12: Roast Flying Squirrel
13: Roast Lighthouse-Keeper
14: Roast Bellybutton Fluff
15: Roast Lamb (at a push)
Just thinking about roast lamb makes me gag a little. Some meats are not meant to be roasted. If to enjoy a roast meat you need to cover it in mint sauce (the sauce of the devil, let's be honest) then it probably doesn't taste nice. Why enjoy the wondrous texture of beef when you could have the sliminess of lamb? Why savour a melt in the mouth slice of roast turkey when you could be chewing on a slice of baby sheep for half an hour?
The people who enjoy a lamb shish kebab or curry, I bear you no ill will. The meat of the sheep was intended to be diced, skewered and slathered in herbs and spices. For every one roast lamb someone has to be without a curry and eat Tandoori Trout. Do you want THAT on your conscience?
My family is arguably odder than most; but not for any terrible reason, I love them all dearly. It's quite rare now that my immediate family unit (Parents and sister) sit around for dinner, just the four of us - both me and Liz having flown the proverbial nest and spawned children over the last decade. And it's a shame, because I think we're the perfect eccentric family. We'll leave me out of the descriptions, because I'll presume that you know I'm daft... the constant stream of hate-filled blogs pays testimony to that fact. My sister is the butt for the least of my jokes onstage, the hardest working person I know, a brilliant mum, sister and daughter and someone who you can have no comeback to, regardless of the base insults she casually tosses in my direction. A typical exchange between us would go like this:
ME: Hello, Liz.
LIZ: You look like a twat in those trainers.
ME: You have a point. I'm going over there to think about the many mistakes I've made.
My Dad is known to most of the people who know me through comedy as the wonderfully robust gentleman who sometimes drives me to gigs for no reason other than I'm doing OK out of comedy and I was always shit at football as a kid. He only wears black, not because he's the world's oldest and chunkiest goth, but because it's all he likes. He's got a wardrobe like a cut-price Don Simpson (I held back from the more obvious Johnny Cash reference there) - swing the door open and there are reams of black shirts and black jeans from K-Mart, and my parent's garage is full of bottles of Dreft Dark, purchased in the fear that one day it'll be discontinued and my Dad will no longer be the enigmatic man in black, more the slightly peeved man in Charcoal.
My mum is a wonderful woman. She's an awesome influence on my life, and the bravest woman in the universe. She's also responsible for quite a lot of my material, through sheer daftness. Why, just the other day she was talking to people over dinner and she said the following:
"Of course, young people don't go courting these days, do they? What do they call it now? Trapping?"
The fact that she has such a great sense of humour regarding my material is reflected in the end of my hour long show where I tell what I think is quite a touching story about her attending one of my gigs after getting the all clear from her cancer treatment. Steve Bennett called it a "pathos tinged climax", which meant I had to explain what that meant to my family. My mother thought it was a Greek Island, my sister one of the Muskahounds. I tried telling her that they were based on the Muskateers but I chickened out. I like the idea that Dogtanian was the original story, it was better.
On the rare occassions we get together for Sunday Lunch it is always a jovial, enjoyable and memorable affair. But I can guarantee that one thing will happen. I will enter the house and ask what we're having for lunch. My father will inevitably answer "Roast Lamb" with a smile on his face. He does this for a reason.
If you rank Roast Lamb as the king of all Roasts then you are a filthy liar. My order of roast preference goes like this - and therefore is completely reflective of society as a whole, because I'm a 30 year old male.
1: Roast Beef
2: Roast Chicken
3: Roast Turkey
4: Roast Pork (not a fan, but I appreciate it has a place)
5: Roast Duck
6: Roast Pheasant
7: Roast Ostrich
8: Roast Kangaroo
9: Roast Centipede
10: Roast Sea Slug
11: Roast Lemur
12: Roast Flying Squirrel
13: Roast Lighthouse-Keeper
14: Roast Bellybutton Fluff
15: Roast Lamb (at a push)
Just thinking about roast lamb makes me gag a little. Some meats are not meant to be roasted. If to enjoy a roast meat you need to cover it in mint sauce (the sauce of the devil, let's be honest) then it probably doesn't taste nice. Why enjoy the wondrous texture of beef when you could have the sliminess of lamb? Why savour a melt in the mouth slice of roast turkey when you could be chewing on a slice of baby sheep for half an hour?
The people who enjoy a lamb shish kebab or curry, I bear you no ill will. The meat of the sheep was intended to be diced, skewered and slathered in herbs and spices. For every one roast lamb someone has to be without a curry and eat Tandoori Trout. Do you want THAT on your conscience?
Monday 9 March 2009
1: People Reversing Into Parking Spaces
We live in a culture where people are desperate to save time. My generation is responsible for the rise in convenience food, with entire dinners distilled into plastic-bound microwave form. Our days are filled with labour saving machinery - my kitchen has the aforementioned microwave (that to be honest, I don't really trust - but that's because it has a mean face), a dishwasher, a washing machine and an iron that virtually irons clothes itself. By virtually, I mean that's what I dream of at night - that I wake up and somehow live in a Disney film. And if that ever happens, I'd like a wisecracking animal sidekick. Possibly an Otter. Called Simeon.
Not "Simon". That's important.
I won't lie to you. The time-saving elements of my kitchen are redundant as I can't cook, as I result I rarely eat off proper china (and by that I mean cheap Ikea plates, the idea of me having Royal Doulton or Spode crockery is as hilarious as it is unlikely) and I tend to do the washing when I run out of clothes and it's either put the machine on or turn up to gigs wearing tracksuit bottoms and the 1997 Leicester City shirt (with Izzet 8 on the back). And that's not the look I'm going for.
But for most people these time-saving measures are a boon. It gives them more time to work themselves into the ground at their stressful jobs, to write oddly obsessive blogs about things that irk them, to concoct complicated plans on how best to form your own army of bejeweled scooter-riding super-pandas. Essentially there are so many time and labour saving devices in our lives that we should not need to rush around anywhere. We shouldn't need to take yet further steps to speed up our day. We should be able to spend an extra five minutes a day on, lets say, our daily commute, doing whatever we like because dammit, we earned that extra time. Let us stop and pick up litter from a lay-by. Help a stranded motorist change a tyre. Park outside a nunnery playing "Regulate" by Warren G and Nate Dogg. That's all healthy and fun.
Don't use that extra time you've made to reverse into a parking space. Because as a rule, if you choose to park in this way it WILL take you all of that time to do this one simple exercise. And for what? So you can merely drive away at the end of your working day or shopping trip? You can start up your engine and drive away, giving us poor normal-parking folk a regal wave from your fucking Mini Cooper whilst we suffer the mind numbing tedium of - holy crap - reversing just the once and driving away?
I used to work in an office with its own multi storey car park. I could guarantee that every single day the person in front of me in the car park - usually a woman in their mid twenties, trying to prove their fashionista status by carrying a Bloomingdales Brown Bag and of course, driving a fucking Mini Cooper - would reverse into their space, as if to look at me and taunt me about my life. They need to get away as quick as possible at the end of the day and that additional 30 seconds they may have to spend reversing at the end of said day (as opposed to the five minutes they wasted at the beginning of their day trying to jab their fuckwitted car repeatedly into a space like a teenage virgin with a nerve-induced semi trying to coax himself into the correct hole) would merely get in the way of their important plans. The gym, coffee with friends, dinner with one of their many suitors at their perfect flat overlooking the river. Five minutes of my day may be wasted but I'm a mere regular parker, with my life limited to eating cold beans from a tin and driving a diesel Focus.
If I ever build a car park - and let's be honest, that's the dream - then I'm equipping each space with those spikes that burst your tires of you drive over them a certain way. That'll teach them.
Not "Simon". That's important.
I won't lie to you. The time-saving elements of my kitchen are redundant as I can't cook, as I result I rarely eat off proper china (and by that I mean cheap Ikea plates, the idea of me having Royal Doulton or Spode crockery is as hilarious as it is unlikely) and I tend to do the washing when I run out of clothes and it's either put the machine on or turn up to gigs wearing tracksuit bottoms and the 1997 Leicester City shirt (with Izzet 8 on the back). And that's not the look I'm going for.
But for most people these time-saving measures are a boon. It gives them more time to work themselves into the ground at their stressful jobs, to write oddly obsessive blogs about things that irk them, to concoct complicated plans on how best to form your own army of bejeweled scooter-riding super-pandas. Essentially there are so many time and labour saving devices in our lives that we should not need to rush around anywhere. We shouldn't need to take yet further steps to speed up our day. We should be able to spend an extra five minutes a day on, lets say, our daily commute, doing whatever we like because dammit, we earned that extra time. Let us stop and pick up litter from a lay-by. Help a stranded motorist change a tyre. Park outside a nunnery playing "Regulate" by Warren G and Nate Dogg. That's all healthy and fun.
Don't use that extra time you've made to reverse into a parking space. Because as a rule, if you choose to park in this way it WILL take you all of that time to do this one simple exercise. And for what? So you can merely drive away at the end of your working day or shopping trip? You can start up your engine and drive away, giving us poor normal-parking folk a regal wave from your fucking Mini Cooper whilst we suffer the mind numbing tedium of - holy crap - reversing just the once and driving away?
I used to work in an office with its own multi storey car park. I could guarantee that every single day the person in front of me in the car park - usually a woman in their mid twenties, trying to prove their fashionista status by carrying a Bloomingdales Brown Bag and of course, driving a fucking Mini Cooper - would reverse into their space, as if to look at me and taunt me about my life. They need to get away as quick as possible at the end of the day and that additional 30 seconds they may have to spend reversing at the end of said day (as opposed to the five minutes they wasted at the beginning of their day trying to jab their fuckwitted car repeatedly into a space like a teenage virgin with a nerve-induced semi trying to coax himself into the correct hole) would merely get in the way of their important plans. The gym, coffee with friends, dinner with one of their many suitors at their perfect flat overlooking the river. Five minutes of my day may be wasted but I'm a mere regular parker, with my life limited to eating cold beans from a tin and driving a diesel Focus.
If I ever build a car park - and let's be honest, that's the dream - then I'm equipping each space with those spikes that burst your tires of you drive over them a certain way. That'll teach them.
Hatred.
I've not been in the best mood all week, so I've been ranting about quite a few things. In the interest of promoting my own creativity and somehow channelling this terrible whining and stunted aggression into something positive, I shall now attempt to write a blog on each of the following and why the irk me so.
So yes. 50 things that I have registered my hatred for in the last seven days:
1. People reversing into parking spaces
2. Roast Lamb
3. Manufactured pop music (with the exception of Girls Aloud)
4. Creosote
5. Improper use of the word "random"
6. Cocaine
7. The Nintendo Wii
8. Alcohol
9. Furniture
10. Fresh mint (especially on potatoes)
11. Racism
12. Psychics
13. People (normally younger than me) who make everything sound like a question?
14. 30 year olds exhibiting playground homophobia
15. The music press
16. Robbie Williams
17. American TV Casting
18. Strawberries
19. Film remakes
20. Being the oldest person at music gigs
21. Coventry
22. Ageing
23. Hulk Hogan
24. Religion
25. People blowing the paper bit of restaurant straws off
26. The Daily Mail
27. Condom adverts
28. Maths
29. U2
30. My hair
31. Dancing
32. Mowing the lawn
33. Bad tattoos
34. The Now albums
35. Brie
36. My diet
37. Student music chauvanism
38. Swearing for the sake of it
39. Apple
40. Migraines
41. Stupidity
42. Punk rock imposters
43. Guitarists in shit bands spinning around like twats
44. N-Dubz
45. Txtspk
46. Fizz
47. Burlesque as an excuse
48. Dating
49. Hair straighteners
50. Cricket
They're not in any order. I'm already aware that racism is to be hated more than roast lamb - this is merely how the ideas poured into the blog, stream of consciousness stylee.
Now there's a phrase I haven't used since A-Level English, 1996.
The writings of an irritated old man to come.
Jim x
So yes. 50 things that I have registered my hatred for in the last seven days:
1. People reversing into parking spaces
2. Roast Lamb
3. Manufactured pop music (with the exception of Girls Aloud)
4. Creosote
5. Improper use of the word "random"
6. Cocaine
7. The Nintendo Wii
8. Alcohol
9. Furniture
10. Fresh mint (especially on potatoes)
11. Racism
12. Psychics
13. People (normally younger than me) who make everything sound like a question?
14. 30 year olds exhibiting playground homophobia
15. The music press
16. Robbie Williams
17. American TV Casting
18. Strawberries
19. Film remakes
20. Being the oldest person at music gigs
21. Coventry
22. Ageing
23. Hulk Hogan
24. Religion
25. People blowing the paper bit of restaurant straws off
26. The Daily Mail
27. Condom adverts
28. Maths
29. U2
30. My hair
31. Dancing
32. Mowing the lawn
33. Bad tattoos
34. The Now albums
35. Brie
36. My diet
37. Student music chauvanism
38. Swearing for the sake of it
39. Apple
40. Migraines
41. Stupidity
42. Punk rock imposters
43. Guitarists in shit bands spinning around like twats
44. N-Dubz
45. Txtspk
46. Fizz
47. Burlesque as an excuse
48. Dating
49. Hair straighteners
50. Cricket
They're not in any order. I'm already aware that racism is to be hated more than roast lamb - this is merely how the ideas poured into the blog, stream of consciousness stylee.
Now there's a phrase I haven't used since A-Level English, 1996.
The writings of an irritated old man to come.
Jim x
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